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: WAR DEPARTMENT : : : OFFICE OF SECRE' 



SPECIAL REPORT OF 



WM. H. TAFT . 

Secretary of War 



TO THE PRESIDENT 



ON THE PHIUPPINES 




WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

-1908 



1.S, WAR DEPARTMENT : : : OFFICE OF SECRETARY 
■I 

SPECIAL REPORT OF 

WM. H. TAFT ' 

Secretary of War 
TO THE PRESIDENT 

ON THE PHILIPPINES 




WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

1908 






LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
RECEIVED 

AUG 2 8 1929 

DOCUMENTS DIVISION 



COISTTEITTS. 



Page. 

Letter of transmittal 5 

Condition as to law and order — Their restoration and permanent maintenance. 9 

Work of the United States Army 13 

Promise of extension of self-government 14 

Organization of the Federal party 15 

Central government 15 

Effect on permanent order of municipal and provincial governments and 

national assembly . . : 16 

Establishment of courts 17 

Philippine constabulary 19 

Friars' lands 20 

Present condition 23 

Political capacity and intellectual development of the Filipinos under Spain 
and the steps taken by the Philippine government for their general and • 

political education 23 

Education in schools 27 

Filipino cadets at West Point 31 

Practical political educatipn,. . . ,^[.[i. . . . .. ^",.". :: ::-::': 31 

Municipalities and province^ -1^. ^ ,."~, .^. . . . . .'. 31 

Civil service..: ll::'y.'.:^l'}3..:.,,....; ' 39 

Civil rights 1 40 

National assembly •;->r->C- - .'♦. ,c. c,, v - ii^- ;- 42 

Sanitation : j. 49 

Benguet — A health report . , ...,.<> , i*. --^p, . . -^,, , ,.. .^ .,. . .i 56 

Comparative mortality from January 1, raOl/tO' Se|ytenjber 30, 1907 57 

Mortality compared with same period of previous years 58 

Material progress and business conditions 58 

Value of Philippine exports, 1903-1907, of American occupation 59 

Value of Philippine exports in Spanish times, calendar years 1885-1894.. 60 

Sugar and tobacco — Eeduction of tariff 60 

Fodder 62 

New plants 62 

Financial condition of the government 62 

Friars' lands 64 

Final settlement in respect to charitable trusts and Spanish-Filipino Bank 

with Eoman Catholic Church 65 

Koads 65 

Railroads in the Philippines , . . . 66 

General business conditions 67 

Business future of Philippines 67 

Gold-standard currency 68 

Need of capital — Agricultural bank 68 

Postal savings bank 69 

Post-office and telegraphs 70 

Mines and mining 71 

United States coastwise trading laws 71 



City of Manila 



3 



4 CONTENTS. 

rage. 

Political future of the islands 73 

Cost of the present government of the islands 77 

Recommendations 79 



Address of Hon, William H. Taft at inauguration of Philippine Assembly 83 

Policy of the United States Government 83 

Time necessary for political preparation 84 

Criticisms of policy of United States 85 

What has been accomplished 85 

Establishment of civil government 85 

Result of opposition 85 

Impatience for further power 86 

Obstacles that had to be overcome 86 

Political 86 

Novelty of task 86 

Reluctance of capitalists to invest money 86 

Failure of Congress to open markets of United States 87 

Diseases of cattle 87 

Cholera, plague, bubonic plague, and other diseases 88 

Ladronism 88 

How the difficulties have been met 88 

Promises of Administration carried out 88 

Establishment of the Assembly 89 

Suppression of insurrection 89 

Progress made -. 89 

Peace and order 89 

Education 89 

Health and sanitation 90 

Judicial system 91 

Constabulary, aid rendered by 91 

Justices of the peace 92 

. Public improvements 92 

Harbors 92 

Road building 92 

Benguet as a health resort 92 

Railroads 92 

Municipal improvements 93 

System of posts, telephones, and telegraphs 93 

Civil-service law 93 

American and Filipino employees , 93 

Tenure and pensions 94 

Public land laws 94 

Agricultural bank 95 

Condition of agriculture - 95 

Financial condition 95 

Silver, value of 95 

Business progress 96 

Sale of the islands 96 

Installation of the National Assembly 97 

Organic act 97 

Result of election 99 

Advice to the members 100 



To the Senate and House of Representatives : 

I transmit herewith the report of Secretary Taft upon his recent 
trip to the Philippines. I heartily concur in the recommendations he' 
makes, and I call especial attention to the admirable work of Gover- 
nor Smith and his associates. It is a subject for just national gratifi- 
cation that such a report as this can be made. No great civilized 
power has ever managed with such wisdom and disinterestedness the 
affairs of a people committed by the accident of war to its hands. If 
we had followed the advice of the misguided persons who wished us 
to turn the islands loose and let them suffer whatever fate might be- 
fall them, they would have already passed through a period of com- 
plete and bloody chaos, and would now undoubtedly be the possession 
of some other power which there is every reason to believe would not 
have done as we have done ; that is, would not have striven to teach 
them how to govern themselves or to have developed them, as we have 
developed them, primarily in their own interests. Save only our atti- 
tude toward Cuba, I question whether there is a brighter page in the 
annals of international dealing between the strong and the weak than 
the page which tells of our doings in the Philippines. I call especial 
attention to the admirably clear showing made by Secretary Taft 
of the fact that it would have been equally ruinous if we had yielded 
to the desires of those who wished us to go faster in the direction of 
giving the Filipinos self-government, and if we had followed the 
polic}^ advocated by others, who desired us simply to rule the islands 
without any thought at all of fitting them for self-government. The 
islanders have made real advances in a hopeful direction, and they 
have opened well with the new Philippine Assembly ; they have yet a 
long way to travel before they will be fit for complete self-govern- 
ment, and for deciding, as it will then be theix duty to do, whether 
this self-government shall be accompanied by complete independence. 
It will probably be a generation, it may even be longer, before this 
point is reached ; but it is most gratifying that such substantial prog- 
ress toward this as a goal has already been accomplished. We desire 
that it be reached at as early a date as possible for the sake of the 
Filipinos and for our own sake. But improperly to endeavor to hurry 
the time will probably mean that the goal will not be attained at all. 

Theodore Roosevelt. 

The White House, 
January 27, 1908. 

5 



SPECIAL REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF WAR. 



Mr. President: 



War Department, 
Washington^ D. G.^ January 23, 1908. 



By your direction I have just visited the Philippine Islands. I 
sailed from Seattle September 13, last; reached Manila October 15; 
» remained in the Islands until November 9, when I returned to the 
United States via Trans-Siberian Railway, reaching New York De- 
cember 20. The occasion for my visit was the opening of the Philip- 
pine Assembly. The members of the Assembly were elected in July 
last, in accordance with the organic act of Congress, by the eligible 
voters of the Christian provinces of the Islands, divided into 80 dis- 
tricts. The Assembly becomes a branch of the legislature of the 
Islands coordinate with the Philippine Commission. This makes a 
decided change in the amount of real power which the Philippine 
electorate is to exercise in the control of the Islands. If justij&ed by 
substantial improvement in the political conditions in the Islands, it 
is a monument of progress. 

It is more than nine years since the battle of Manila Bay and the 
subsequent surrender of Manila by the Spaniards to the American 
forces. It is more than eight years since the exchange of ratifica- 
tions of the treaty of Paris, by which the Philippine Islands passed 
under the sovereignty and became the property of the United States. 
It is more than seven years since President McKinley, by written 
instructions to Mr. Root, Secretary of War, committed the govern- 
ment of the Philippine Islands to the central control of the Philip- 
pine Commission, subject to the supervision of the Secretary of War. 
It is more than six years since the complete installation of a quasi 
civil government in the Islands, with a civil, governor as executive 
and the Commission as a legislature, all by authority of the Presi- 
dent as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy. It is more 
than five years since the steps taken by President McKinley and 
yourself in establishing and maintaining a quasi civil government 
in the Islands were completely ratified and confirmed by the Con- 
gress in an organic act which, in effect, continued the existing govern- 
ment, but gave it needed powers as a really civil government that 
the President under constitutional limitations was unable to confer. 
The installation of the Assembly seems to be, therefore, an appro- 
priate time for a precise statement of the national policy toward the 
people of the Philippines adopted by Mr. McKinley, continued by 
you, and confirmed by Congress, for an historical summary of the 
conditions political, social, and material, existing in the Islands when 
the United States became responsible for their government, and for a 



REPORT OF SECRETA.RY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 7 

review of the results of governmental measures taken to improve the 
conditions of law and order, the political and intellectual capacity of 
the people, and their sanitary and material welfare. 

The policy of the United States toward the Philippines is, of course, 
ultimately for Congress to determine, and it is difficult to see how one 
Congress could bind another Congress, should the second conclude to 
change the policy declared by the first. But we may properly assume 
that after one Congress has announced a policy upon the faith of 
which a whole people has for some years acted and counted, good con- 
science would restrain subsequent Congresses from lightly changing 
it. For four years Congress in silence permitted Mr. McKinley and 
yourself, as Commanders in Chief of the Army, to adopt and carry 
out a policy in the Philippines, and then expressly ratified everything 
which you had done, and confirmed and made part of the statute cer- 
tain instructions which Mr. McKinley issued for the guidance of the 
Philippine Commission in making civil government in the Islands. 
Not only this, but Congress closely followed, in the so-called organic 
act, your recommendations as to provisions for a future change in the 
Philippine government. The national policy may, therefore, be found 
in the course pursued and declarations made by the Chief Executives 
in Congressional messages and other state papers which have met the 
approval of Congress. 

Shortly stated, the national policy is to govern the Philippine 
Islands for the benefit and welfare and uplifting of the people of the 
Islands and gradually to extend to them, as they shall show them- 
selves fit to exercise it, a greater and greater measure of popular self- 
government. One of the corollaries to this proposition is that the 
United States in its government of the Islands will use every effort 
to increase the capacity of the Filipinos to exercise political power, 
both by general education of the densely ignorant masses and by 
actual practice, in partial self-government, of those whose political 
capacity is such that practice can benefit it without too great injury 
to the efficiency of government. What should be emphasized in the 
statement of our national policy is that we wish to prepare the 
Filipinos for popular self-government. This is plain from Mr. Mc- 
Kinley's letter of instructions and all of his utterances. It was not 
at all within his purpose or that of the Congress which made his letter 
part of the law of the land that we were merely to await the organiza- 
tion of a Philippine oligarchy or aristocracy competent to administer 
government and then turn the Islands over to it. On the contrary, 
it is plain, from all of Mr. McKinley's utterances and your own, in 
interpretation of our national purpose, that we are the trustees and 
guardians of the whole Filipino people, and peculiarly of the ignorant 
masses, and that our trust is not discharged until those masses are 
given education sufficient to know their civil rights and maintain 



8 BEPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

them against a more powerful class and safely to exercise the politi- 
cal franchise. This is impoi^tant, in view of the claim, to which I 
shall hereafter refer, made by certain Filipino advocates of imme- 
diate independence under the auspices of the Boston anti-imperialists, 
that a satisfactory independent Philippine government could be es- 
tablished under a governing class of 10 per cent and a serving and 
obedient class of 90 per cent. 

Another logical deduction from the main proposition is that when 
the Filipino people as a whole, show themselves reasonably fit to 
conduct a popular self-government, maintaining law and order and 
offering equal protection of the laws and civil rights to rich and 
poor, and desire complete independence of the United States, they 
shall be given it. The standard set, of course, is not that of perfec- 
tion or such a governmental capacity as that of an Anglo-Saxon peo- 
ple, but it certainly ought to be one of such popular political capacity 
that complete independence in its exercise will result in progress rather 
than retrogression to chaos or tyranny. It should be noted, too, that 
the tribunal to decide whether the proper political capacity exists to 
justify independence is Congress and not the Philippine electorate. 
Aspiration for independence may well be one of the elements in 
the make-up of a people to show their capacity for it, but there are 
other qualifications quite as indispensable. The judgment of a people 
as to their own political capacity is not an unerring guide. 

The national Philippine policy contemplates a gradual extension 
of popular control, ^. ^., by steps. This was the plan indicated in Mr. 
McKinley's instructions. This was the method indicated in your 
recommendation that a popular assembly be made part of the legis- 
lature. This was evidently the view of Congress in adopting your 
recommendation, for the title of the act is " For the temporary gov- 
ernment of the Philippine Islands " and is significant of a purpose or 
policy that the government then being established was not in perma- 
nent form, but that changes in it from time to time would be 
necessary. 

In the historical summary of conditions in the Islands when the 
United States assumed responsibility for their government and the 
review of measures adopted by the present Philippine government 
to improve conditions and the results, it will be convenient to con- 
sider the whole subject under the following heads: 

1. The conditions as to law and order. The way in which they 
have been restored and are now permanently maintained. 

2. The political capacity and intellectual development of the 
Fihpinos under Spain and the steps taken by the Philippine govern- 
ment for their general and political education. 

3. Conditions of health under Spain. The sanitary measures under 
(he Philippine government. 



BEPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. \) 

4. The material and business conditions. Progress made under 
present government. 

5. The future of the Philippines. 

6. The cost of the Philippine government to the United States. 

THE CONDITIONS AS TO LAW AND ORDER— THEIR RESTORATION 
AND PERMANENT MAINTENANCE. 

In 1896 occurred the first real insurrection against the Government 
of Spain in the Philippine Islands. The idea of a more liberal gov- 
ernment than that which Spain gave the Islands had taken root in 
1871 with the opening of the Suez Canal, the flocking of Spaniards 
to Manila, and the spread of republican doctrines that had had a short 
triumph in the mother country about that time. In the measures of 
repression which were adopted from time to time by Spanish govern- 
ors-general the aid of Spanish parish priests was thought by the peo- 
ple to be actively enlisted in ferreting out those suspected of sedition 
and too liberal political views. The priests were largely from the 
four religious orders — the Dominicans, the Augustinians, the Fran- 
ciscans, and the Recoletos. There was a considerable body of native 
priests also, but they were of the secular clergy, held the less desirable 
posts, and were hostile to the Spanish friars. Three of the religious 
orders held large bodies of rich agricultural lands situate, much of it, 
in Cavite, Laguna, Manila, Morong, Bataan, and Bulacan, all thickly 
populated provinces close to Manila. Their tenants numbered sixty 
or seventy thousand persons. The insurrection of 1896 was not only 
against the Spanish Government to secure a more liberal regime, but 
it was also for the elimination of the friars as a controlling political 
element in the community. It was largely confined to Cavite, La- 
guna, Manila, and Bulacan, where lay the large friars' estates. It had 
an agrarian aspect. There was much fighting, and the losses on both 
sides were very heavy, especially in the province of Cavite. Ulti- 
mately the drastic measures of the Spaniards drove Aguinaldo and 
the forces which he led out of Cavite into Bulacan and led to what 
was known as the treaty of Biac-na-Bato. This was an arrangement 
by which many of the insurrecto chiefs, including Aguinaldo, agreed, 
in consideration of the payment of a large sum of money, to end the 
insurrection and withdraw from the Islands. The money was to be 
paid in three installments. The first payment was made, and many of 
the chiefs, including Aguinaldo, withdrew from the Islands and went 
to Hongkong. There was much dispute as to what the agreement was, 
and it was strenuously insisted by each side that the other failed to 
comply with its stipulations. It is not material now to consider this 
mooted question. Suffice it to say that in 1898, when Admiral Dewey 
attacked the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay, the embers of dissatisfac- 
tion on the part of the former Filipino insurgents with the Spanish 



10 REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

Government were still aglow, and it was not difficult for Aguinaldo 
to raise a force of insurrectos to aid the Americans in surrounding 
Manila and in driving Spain from the Islands. 

Between 1896 and 1898 the conditions which had been brought on 
by the first insurrection continued, and trade was much interrupted, 
agriculture did not flourish, and conditions as to the maintenance of 
order were by no means favorable. As an index to this, it may be 
said that the managers of the friars' estates collected no rents from 
the tenants after 1896. The battle of Manila Bay and the defeat of 
the Spanish fleet destroyed the prestige of Spain throughout the 
Islands and created insurrection in nearly every province. The re- 
fusal of General Merritt to permit Aguinaldo's troops to enter 
Manila created a resentment on the part of the Filipino soldiers, 
and the relations between the Americans and the Filipinos soon be- 
came strained. The situation was not relieved at all by the signing of 
the treaty at Paris, transferring the sovereignty of the islands to the 
Americans. Meantime, as the Americans were confined to the occu- 
pation of Manila, Aguinaldo and his military assistants attempted the 
organization of a government . throughout the islands. A so-called 
constitutional convention was held at Malolos and a constitution was 
adopted. At the same time the Visayan republic was organized, to 
embrace the Visayan Islands, under certain Visayan leaders. • It pro- 
fessed allegiance to Aguinaldo's government. Neither Aguinaldo's 
government nor the Visayan government was able to maintain order, 
and the whole country was subject to the looting of predatory bands, 
and chaos reigned. T\'Tiere the Aguinaldo government had authority, 
it was exercised with military severity and with much local oppres- 
sion and corruption. On the 4th of February, 1899, there was an 
attack by the Filipino forces surrounding Manila upon the American 
troops, which was successfully resisted. Later on, upon the 23d of 
February, there was an outbreak in Manila itself, and an attempt to 
burn the city, which was suppressed by the American troops with a 
heavy hand. 

On the 11th of April the treaty ceding the Philippine Islands to 
the United States was ratified and ratifications exchanged. From 
that time until the spring of 1900 a campaign was carried on by 
the American forces against the regularly organized troops under 
Aguinaldo, Aguinaldo's forces were defeated and scattered, and then 
in 1900 there succeeded a guerrilla warfare in nearly every province 
in the Islands, which was continued with more or less vigor until July, 
1902. The guerrilla warfare was carried on only because of the 
encouragement received by the insurrectos from speeches of the 
so-called " anti-imperialists " and the assurances publicly given by 
political leaders in the United States of immediate severance of the 



EEPOKT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 11 

relations between the Islands and the United States in case the Ad- 
ministration were defeated in the election. At times the warfare 
would seem to cease and the insurrection seem to be at an end, and then 
it would revive again, apparently with a view to influencing elections 
in America. 

It can readily be inferred from this statement that from the 
breaking out of the insurrection in 1896, with the new insurrection 
in 1898, and the war with the Americans beginning early in 1899 until 
the close of the guerrilla warfare in June, 1902, the conditions of 
the country were not peaceable and agriculture could not flourish. 
Not only did the existence of actual war prevent farming, but the 
spirit of laziness and restlessness brought on by a guerrilla life af- 
fected the willingness of the native to work in the fields. More than 
this, the natural hatred for the Americans which a war vigorously 
conducted by American soldiers was likely to create did not make the 
coming of real peace easy. 

But in addition to these disturbed conditions, due directly to war, 
there are certain features of Philippine civilization always present, 
war or no war, that do not tend to permanent tranquillity and can not 
be ignored. 

In the first place the Philippines have been infested with ladrones, 
or robber bands, since their earliest history. The Spanish Govern- 
ment maintained a large force, called " la guardia civil," to suppress 
the evil. In some provinces, blackmail was regularly paid by large 
landowners to insure themselves against the loss incident to attack and 
destruction of their property. In the province of Cavite, for instance, 
ladronism was constant, and it was understood that the managers of 
the friars' estates, which amounted in all in that province to 125,000 
acres, usually paid blackmail to ladrones in the form of money or 
provisions. The province of Cavite was known as " the mother of 
ladrones," and there was certainly a sympathy between the loAver 
classes and the ladrones who mulcted the landlords. 

But besides the ladrone habit, which makes for continued disorder, 
there is another quality of the ignorant masses of the Philippine 
people that is a constant danger to tranquillity. More than 80 per 
cent of the Philippine people are illiterate. Their ignorance is dense. 
They speak some 15 or 16 different Malay dialects. KnoAvledge of 
one dialect does not give an understanding of another. Each dialect 
has a limited vocabulary, which offers no medium of communication 
with modern thought or civilization. Their ignorance makes them 
suspicious of all educated persons but those of their own race who 
know their dialect and are well to do. 

The result is that in rural communities in the Philippines whole 
townships of people are completely subject to the will of any educated, 



12 REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR Ols" THE PHILIPPINES. 

active-minded person living in that community, who knows the local 
dialect and is willing or able to arouse either the fears or cupidity of 
his neighbors into the organization of a band either to resist fancied 
dangers or oppression, to satisfy vengeance, or to achieve a living and 
comfort without labor. This is the central and most important fact 
in the make-up of the local Philippine communities. It has led to the 
abuse of caciquism, i. e., local bossism, to which I shall refer in the 
question of the organization of municipalities and provincial govern- 
ments. The history of the insurrection and of the condition of law- 
lessness which succeeded the insurrection is full of instances in which 
simple-minded country folk at the bidding of the local leader, or 
cacique, have committed the most horrible crimes of torture and mur- 
der, and when arrested and charged with it have merely pleaded that 
they were ordered to commit the crime by the great man of the 
community. This irresponsible power possessed by local leaders over 
their ignorant neighbors, in case of an independent Filipino govern- 
ment lacking the moral strei^igth which the United States Government 
derives from its power and resources and its determination to punish 
disturbance and maintain order, would, under present conditions, 
lead, after a short period, to a chaos of ever-recurring revolt and in- 
surrection to satisfy the vengeance of disappointed bosses and local 
leaders. 

Whenever Filipino municipal of&cials come into contact either with 
non-Christian tribes or with inferior peoples of their own race like 
those who live iii the mountains of Samar and Lej^te, known as 
" pulahanes," they are likely to exercise official authority for their 
own profit and to the detriment of the inferior people. Thus in 
Samar and Leyte the mountain people raise a good deal of hemp. 
The municipal authorities of the lowlands and the local caciques 
conspire to prevent the disposition of this hemp to anyone but their 
own agents at an unjustly low price, using duress and a show of 
official authority for the purpose. This fraud and mistreatment 
ultimately creates among the mountain peoples a just sense of indig- 
nation. Then it is that some religious fakir invites them to organize 
against their enemies, under the charm of some religious token, and 
some lowland village is sacked and its people are murdered. The 
central and provincial authorities intervene and a war ensues, which 
lays waste much of the interior of the islands, to suppress a disorder 
that had its inception in a just cause of complaint. 

Of course the frequency of such disturbances is reduced as educa- 
tion spreads, as the poor and oppressed begin to understand their 
rights and the lawful method of asserting them, and as the real cause 
of such outbreaks are more clearly understood and suppressed. But 
no account of the difficulty of maintaining peace and order in the 



EEPOKT OF SECEETAEY OF WAR OK THE PHILIPPINES. 13 

Philippines would be accurate or just which did not make clear this 
possible recurring cause of trouble and disturbance under present 
conditions, due to the ease with which simple-minded, ignorant people 
of a conununity can be aroused, by one or more of the better educated 
of their own race viciously inclined, to deeds of murder and cruel 
violence. Such disturbances are generally heralded as the evidence of 
seething sedition and discontent with the American Government, 
whereas they are generally but the effect and symptom of mere local 
abuses entirely Filipino in origin. 

Having thus described the conditions of disorder, actual and poten- 
tial, in the Philippines, due not only to the four or five years of inter- 
mittent and recurring war, the rancor and race hatred it tended to 
create, the unfounded hopes held out by American anti-imperialists/ 
and all the other sequelae of war, but also to certain normal features 
and qualities of the j)resent Philippine civilization, I come to review 
the measures taken and policy adopted by the American Government 
to bring the Islands to their present state of complete tranquillity. 

THE WOKK OF THE UNITED STATES ARIMY. 

The agency of the Army in bringing about order in the Islands 
must never be minimized. The hardships of the campaign which 
it had to carry on were very great. The responsibility which was 
thrown upon captains, lieutenants, and sergeants in command of 
small detachments into which it was necessary to divide the Army 
to meet the exigencies of guerrilla warfare was met with courage and 
intelligence and great fertility of resource under most trying and 
unusual conditions. It is not too much to say that no other army 
of the same size could have accomplished the results which were 
accomplished by the American Army. At times there were some 
members of this Army who were tempted, in the eagerness of pursuit, 
into indefensible and cruel practices for the obtaining of informa- 
tion — practices which had been comjnon among the Spaniards and the 
Filipinos themselves. Revelations of these cruelties led to severe 
indiscriminate criticism ^nd attacks on the Army as a whole which 
were calculated to discourage and dishearten, but in spite of all 
difficulties the work went on. At one time in the campaign against 
guerrilla Avarfare there were more than 500. different posts and more 
than 65,000 men in arms. Certain it is that order would have never 
been restored without the efficient and courageous service rendered 
by the Army, and in spite of all the stories that were told of the 
cruelties inflicted by the Americans upon Filipinos, only a small part 
of which were true, any candid observer of the conditions at the time 
must admit that the American soldiers as a body exhibited toward 
the Filipinos a self-restraint and a sympathy with the benevolent 



14 REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON" THE PHILIPPINES. 

purposes of the administration which the circumstances and the char- 
acter of the Filipino warfare carried on were not calculated to 
invite. 

Not only did the Army do most efficient work in the suppression of 
the insurrection when war was rife, but the presence of 12,000 Ameri- 
can soldiers in the Islands since has been a moral force of great weight 
to secure peaceful conditions. Occasionally they have been called on 
for active work in subduing disorders in particular provinces which 
had gone beyond the control of the local and insular peace officers and 
they have rendered prompt and effective service in such cases. They 
are now being concentrated in larger and larger posts for economical, 
educational, and disciplinary purposes, but their presence anywhere 
^in the Islands is beneficial to the cause of order. They are now popu- 
lar with the Filipinos, and we find the same objection to abandonment 
of posts by neighboring Filipino communities that we meet in the 
United States. 

PROMISE OF EXTENSION OF SELF-GOVERNMENT. 

President McKinley announced as his policy that the Philippine 
Islands would be taken over by the American Government to be 
governed for the benefit of the Filipinos, and that as they developed 
fitness for partial self-government it should be gradually extended 
to them. In order to enforce and give evidence of this purpose, he 
appointed a Commission in 1899, known from its chairman, Hon. J. 
G. Schurman, as the " Schurman Commission," to visit the Philippine 
Islands and extend local self-government as rapidly as possible. The 
Commission was able only to investigate conditions and to report that 
in its judgment the Filipinos were not fit for self-government. It was 
able to be present at the organization of municipal government in a 
few towns which had been captured by the Americans, but it prac- 
tically was able to do no constructive work, in view of the conditions 
of war that existed while it was there. It returned to the United 
States and made its report. 

In February of 1900 a new Commission was appointed by Presi- 
dent McKinley, who gave it much more ample powers than its pred- 
ecessor, for the purpose of organizing civil government in the wake 
of war as rapidly as conditions would permit. The powers conferred 
were set forth in a letter of instructions delivered by President 
McKinley to Mr. Root, Secretary of War, for his guidance and that 
of the Commission in respect of the policy to be pursued in the 
Philippines. The Commission arrived in June, 1900. The Com- 
mission was not authorized to assume any authority until the 1st of 
September and spent its time from June until September, 1900, in 
making investigations. It then took over the power and duty of en- 
acting legislation to make a government for that part of the Islands 



KEPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 15 

in which war had ceased to exist and to make appropriations from 
funds raised by taxation for civil purposes. The preparation and 
enactment of a municipal and a provincial code for the organization 
and maintenance of municipalties and provirces in the Islands occu- 
pied much of the attention of the Commission during the remainder 
of the year 1900. 

For the three or four months prior to the Presidential election in 
November, 1900, it was impossible to proceed with the actual organi- 
zation of civil government. The insurgents were assured that the 
Administration of Mr. McKinley would be defeated and that his de- 
feat would be immediately followed by a separation of the Islands 
from the United States. Everything hung on the election. The re- 
election of Mr. McKinley was a great blow to the insurrectos. 

ORGANIZATION OF THE FEDERAL PARTY. 

It is a mistake to suppose that the war by the Filipinos against the 
Americans had the sj^mpathy of all the Filipinos. On the contrary, 
there were many intelligent and conservative men who favored 
American control and who did not believe in the capacity of their 
people immediately to organize a government which would be stable 
and satisfactory, but in the face of a possible independence of the 
Islands, they were still. Upon Mr. McKinley's second election many 
of these persons reached the conclusion that it was time for them to 
act. Accordingly, they formed the Federal Party, the chief platform 
of which was peace under American sovereignty and the acceptance 
of the American promises to govern the Islands for the benefit of the 
Filipinos and gradually to extend popular self-government to the 
people. The Federal Party received accessions by thousands in all 
parts of the Islands and in every province, so that the Commission 
was enabled during the year 1901, and under the auspices, and with 
the aid of, the Federal Party, to organize civil government in some 32 
or 33 provinces, or in substantially all of them. The proof of the 
purposes of the American Government, given in the popular features 
of the provincial and municipal codes, which bore out in every re- 
spect the general promises of President McKinley, had much to do 
with the ending of the war. From November 1, 1900, until July 1, 
1901, when military government was declared to be ended and a civil 
governor appointed, the men and guns surrendered exceeded that of 
any similar period in the history of the war. 

THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. 

The somewhat anomalous creation of the Philippine Commission, as 
a civil legislature in a purely military government established by the 
President by virtue of his powers as Commander in Chief, presented 



16 REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

some difficult questions of jurisdiction between the military governor 
and the Commission and led to considerable friction. The Commis- 
sion, however, held the purse strings, and as is usual in such cases 
the control of appropriations ultimately left the powers of the Com- 
mission substantial and undisputed. Another difficulty arose in re- 
spect to jurisdiction of the courts established and appointed by the 
Commissioners to issue writs of habeas corpus to inquire into the 
legality of the detention of civilians by the general commanding. 
This, too, subsequently was worked out in favor of the civil courts. 
The differences between the military and civil authorities did not es- 
cape the attention of the Philippine public, and of course the sym- 
pathy of the Filipinos went with the civil side of the controversy, 
and the appointment of a civil governor July 1, 1901, and the cloth- 
ing him with extensive authority had the popular approval. This 
was increased by the appointment to the Commission of three Fili- 
pino members. They were the most prominent members of the 
Federal Party. The Commission now consisted of the civil governor, 
four other Americans, and three Filipinos. The four American 
members, in addition to their legislative work, were made respec- 
tively the heads of four departments — one of finance and justice, the 
second of the interior, the third of commerce and police, and the 
fourth of public instruction. To these departments were assigned the 
appropriate bureaus by which the business of the central government 
was directly carried on. The presence of the Filipinos in the con- 
trolling body of the government offered an excellent opportunity for 
Filipino influence to affect legislation and brought to the new quasi 
civil government a sympathetic support from the Filipino public 
that included most of those but recently in arms against American 
sovereignty. 

In some provinces civil government proved to have been prema- 
turely established, notably in Batangas, Cavite, Cebu, and Samar, 
and in the fall of 1901 the services of the Army were again required in 
those provinces. But ultimately they became peaceful. The guer- 
rilla forces which continued in arms were finally subjugated or 
brought in through the vigor of the Army and the influence of the 
Federal party, before July 1, 1902, when peace was officially declared 
to exist by your proclamation of amnesty. 

EFFECT ON PERMANENT ORDER OF MUNICIPAL AND PROVINCIAL G0\T:RN- 
MENTS AND NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 

Under the head of political education I shall describe the initiation 
and maintenance of municipal and provincial governments in some 
detail, and shall consider them and the assembly as instruments in 



REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON" THE PHILIPPINES. 17 

the political education of the Filipinos and comment on their effi- 
ciency and defects as government agencies. I now wish to refer to 
them as part of the so-called policy of "attraction." The Filipino 
people did not expect the liberal and popular provisions of the munici- 
pal and provincial codes, and their enactment created the revulsion 
of feeling that enabled the Federal party to bring on peace. The 
part the people were given in governing both towns and prov- 
inces stimulated them to efforts in behalf of order that became greatly 
more sympathetic and effective, when, as I hereafter point out, the 
officers of the insular constabulary learned their real function of as- 
sistance and not independent command. The giving control of the 
provincial board to two elected officials added to their sense of re- 
sponsibility as to order in the province and was convincing of the 
sincerity of American promise to extend popular control by gradual 
steps. 

The provisions of the organic act passed by Congress in July, 1902, 
confirming President McKinley's policy and the promise of an as- 
sembly if good order was maintained, had a great effect to make the 
Filipino people anxious to preserve order, and no act of the American 
Executive was more convincing to the people of the good faith of 
the Administration than your proclamation of the elections at a time 
when an excuse for delay within the law might easily have been found 
in some of the disturbances then existing. The existence and influ- 
ence of the assembly are important continuing factors in the mainte- 
nance of law and order. 

ESTABLISHMENT OF COURTS. 

Even under the purely military administration before the appoint- 
ment of the Commission a military governor had established civil 
courts for the purpose of disposing of civil cases and for such viola- 
tions of law as were not more conveniently disposed of by military 
tribunals. The Commission early passed a law dividing the Islands 
into some 15 districts, establishing a court of first instance in each dis- 
trict, together with a supreme court of seven to consider appeals from 
the courts of first instance. This system was recognized and adopted 
by Congress in the organic act of July 1, 1902. The policy was pur- 
sued of appointing a Filipino, the first lawyer of the Islands, the 
chief justice of the supreme court, together with two Filipino col- 
leagues and four Americans. About the same proportion between 
Americans and Filipinos was observed in the appointment of judges 
of the court of first instance. 

There was great difficulty in finding proper material for the Amer- 
ican judges because there were so few American lawyers in the United 

33483—08 2 



18 REPORT OP SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

States who spoke Spanish, and it greatly interfered with the conven- 
ience of hearings if the judge did not know Spanish. However, time 
cured this difficulty, because the American appointees rapidly acquired 
a knowledge of the Spanish language sufficient to take testimony and 
hear arguments without interpreters. The first years of the courts, 
especially in the country, were almost entirely occupied in hearing 
criminal cases. The civil government very soon adopted the position 
that after a state of peace had been declared in 1902, men in arms 
engaged in looting and robbery should be treated not as insurrectos or 
as enemies under the laws of war, but merely as violators of the local 
law. In the early days of the insurrection if a body of insurrectos 
was organized in any province and was captured, their guns were taken 
and after a short imprisonment the men were released. This practice 
had led to a feeling on the part of the ignorant people that they 
might with impunity resort to arms, and if caught thereafter that they 
would be imprisoned for a short time only and then released. The 
imposition of long sentences, fifteen or twenty years, and the confine- 
ment of men in Bilibid prison and the requirement that they should 
work at hard labor was a most effective method of teaching the igno- 
rant and easily led members of a community the difference between 
a political revolution and the crime of robbery and living on one's 
neighbors by force. 

A great number of persons in various provinces were prosecuted 
for bandittiism. A statute was passed to cover these cases providing 
that a man might be convicted of a felony by conclusive proof that he 
was a member of a band organized to commit robberies, even though 
no evidence was adduced to show any particular robbery in which he 
was personally concerned. This has been hailed as a departure from 
the usages of the common law and the spirit of our institutions. It is 
nothing of the kind. It is merely the denunciation of a particular 
kind of conspiracy. It was entirely impracticable to identify the per- 
petrators of particular robberies, but it was entirely practicable to 
prove conclusively the existence of a band to commit the robberies, 
and the membership of the particular defendant in that band, although 
his presence at the commission of an overt act it was often impossible 
to show. There is not the slightest reason in law or morals why a man 
thus proved to be a robber should not be punished and punished just 
as severely as the men who were actually taken in the commission of 
the act. The effect of this law was to bring to justice a great number 
of criminals in various provinces, and its vigorous administration by 
both the Filipino and American judges under active prosecution by Fil- 
ipino prosecutors did much toward the suppression of ladronism. 
The difficulty was that the number of convicted persons became so 
large as to strain the capacity of the jails and penitentiaries in the 
Islands. This congested condition has been met, however, now, first, 



KEPORT OF SECEETARY OF WAR ON" THE PHILIPPINES. 19 

by the establishment of a penal colony in the island of Palawan, and, 
second, by the use of prisoners in several provinces for the construc- 
tion of roads. 

After many of those sentenced for highway robbery had served two 
years the governor-general appointed a commission to go over the 
cases to recommend for pardon those persons who, while guilty of the 
crime charged were not of the criminal class, but had been led into 
it by duress and undue influence of neighboring brigand chiefs and 
caciques. Quite a large number of these persons were paroled and 
sent back to their homes to give them an opportunity to become good 
citizens. The changing condition of the country and the maintenance 
of law and order are evidenced by the fact that the proportion of 
civil cases to criminal cases in the courts of first instance and the 
supreme court is rapidly increasing. It is becoming much easier to 
dispose of the criminal cases, while it is the civil cases that now clog 
the dockets. The standard in the administration of justice in the 
Islands is high. It has been sometimes charged by irresponsible 
persons that some of the judges were subject to executive influence. 
An investigation into the matter discloses not the slightest evidence of 
the existence of any such evil, and the whole charge rests on the easily 
spread rumor of disappointed litigants or political enemies of the gov- 
ernment. On the whole, I am quite sure that throughout the Islands 
the judges of the courts, and especially the members of the supreme 
court, have the entire confidence of the public in the justice and sin- 
cerity of their conclusions. No distinction has been made in the hear- 
ing of causes by a Filipino or American judge, and the system moves 
on quietly and effectively to accomplish the purpose for which it was 
adopted. The influence of the courts in the restoration of order has 
been very important. 

THE PHILIPPINE CONSTABULARY. 

Another step most necessary and useful in the restoration of order 
was the organization of a body of upward of 5,000 men, Filipinos 
officered by Americans, into a constabulary divided into companies 
and organized by Regular Army officers. But little difficulty was 
found in the organization of this body as an efficient fighting and 
scouting force, but it took several years of training, of elimination, 
and of severe discipline before the subordinate officers, those assigned 
to each province, were made to understand the proper policy to 
be pursued by them in respect to the native governors and presi- 
dentes of the municipalities who had been elected by the people under 
the municipal and provincial codes. At first there was constant 
friction and suspicion between them, and this did not aid at all the 
work of suppressing ladrones and other disreputable and vicious ele- 
ments of the community. Year by year, however, improvement has 



20 REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

been made in this regard, and the lesson has been taught that the 
constabulary are not a military force, but a force of police organized 
by the central government and paid out of its treasury to assist in a 
sympathetic way the native local officers in the work of suppression 
of disorder and lawlessness of their particular localities. When I 
was in the Islands two years ago the native papers were full of con- 
demnation of the constabulary and its severity. During the last two 
years a most remarkable change has taken place in the relations be- 
tween the officers and men of this force and the provincial governors 
and officers of the towns, and now there is nothing more popular in 
the Islands than the constabulary. 



A most potential source of disorder in the Islands was the owner- 
ship of what were called the " friars' lands " by three of the religious 
orders of the Islands — the Dominicans, the Augustinians, and the 
so-called bare-footed Augustinians, known as " Recoletos." These 
lands amounted in all to 425,000 acres, of which 275,000 were in the 
immediate neighborhood of Manila, 25,000 in Cebu, and 125,000 in the 
remote provinces of Isabela and Mindoro. The tenants on those 
which were close to Manila numbered some sixty or seventy thousand 
persons. The attitude of the people toward the friars' lands was 
shown by the fact that the so-called constitutional convention assem- 
bled by Aguinaldo at Malolos nationalized the friars' lands — that is, 
appropriated them to the so-called " Kepublic of the Philippines." 
With the restoration of order and the establishment of courts the 
representatives of these religious bodies were entitled to go into court 
and recover from tenants the rents which had been in arrears since 
1896, and to eject them from the lands which they had occupied un- 
less they admitted title and continued to pay rent. The occupants 
of the friars' lands resolutely refused to do either, and the Philippine 
government was confronted with the immediate prospect of suits to 
evict 60,000 tenants in those provinces prone to disturbances and 
insurrection. 

The situation was further strained by the fact that the church, for 
lack of other competent priests, showed every inclination to send 
back to the parishes from which they had been driven as many 
of the friars who had been parish priests as it could. Every 
parish to which a friar priest returned at once began to seethe with 
popular indignation, and threats of violence were constantly made 
toward him. The only solution possible, consistent with the preser- 
vation of vested property rights on the one hand, and the right 
secured by treaty to the friars of freedom of religion and freedom of 
speech in any part of the islands, was some arrangement by which the 



BEPOET OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 21 

land could be taken over by the Government and the church induced 
not to send friars as parish priests to those parishes where riot and 
disturbance were likely to follow. A visit to Eome for consultation 
with the head of the Eoman Catholic Church resulted in the Pope's 
sending an apostolic delegate to the Islands with adequate powers 
and in subsequent negotiations which ultimately led to the purchase 
of the lands for seven millions of dollars and induced a practice on 
the part of the hierarchy of the church by which they send no friars 
as parish priests into any parish in which the governor-general makes 
final objection. 

The price paid for the lands was a good round sum. It had to be 
in order to secure them. Congress, convinced of. the necessity for 
their acquisition, had provided, in the organic act for the establish- 
ment of a government in the Philippines, either for their purchase 
or in the alternative for their condemnation by the Government and 
their subsequent disposition on long, easy terms to the occupants. 
The representatives of the Dominican order objected to the con- 
demnation of their lands and employed able counsel to test the 
validity of the provision for condemnation for such a purpose. The 
point made was a serious one and increased the importance of secur- 
ing the lands by purchase, if possible. With the government as a 
landlord the tenants manifest no disposition to contest its title, save 
in a few isolated cases. I shall not stop now to discuss the present 
value of the lands or their management. I shall refer to that later. 
It is enough for mj present purpose to point out that the acquisition 
of these lands by the government and the adjustment of differences 
as to the use of friars as parish priests have removed a fruitful source 
of disturbance in the provinces of Cavite, Laguna, Manila, Bataan, 
Morong, and Cebu. 

By another compromise, to which I shall refer in detail later, a con- 
troversy between the government and the Roman Catholic Church 
as to charitable and educational trusts and in respect to the Spanish- 
Filipino Bank has been settled. At one time this controversy prom- 
ised to contribute to the disorder of the Islands. 

There are no other questions between the government and the 
Roman Catholic Church, unless it can be said that questions of pos- 
session and title to church property arising from the Aglipayan 
schism can be said to involve them. 

Immediately after our negotiations with Leo XIII at Rome were 
found not to include an absolute agreement to withdraw the friars 
from the Islands, Aglipay, a former Catholic priest under excom- 
munication, organized a schism from the Roman church. He called 
his church the Independent Filipino Catholic Church. At first the 
schism spread far and wide through the Islands, and as the number 
of priests of the Roman Catholic Church by reason of the expulsion 



22 REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON" THE PHILIPPINES. 

of the friars had been reduced so that many churches lay open and 
idle, the priests of the Aglipayan schism, with the acquiescence of 
the townspeople in the various villages where the Aglipayans were in 
the majority, assumed possession of land and church buildings which 
had been occupied in Spanish days by the Roman Catholic Church. 
Possession was taken under a claim that the churches belonged to 
the people of the municipality and that they were able to dispose of 
the use of the churches to such religious purposes as they saw fit. 
This course of procedure led to innumerable controversies and to fre- 
quent breaches of the peace and to a bitterness of feeling that did not 
make either for the tranquillity of the Islands or their prosperity. 

The Executive consistently and properly declined to decide the 
question of title or the right to possession which arose in each case 
after peaceable possession had been taken. This was regarded as 
unreasonable by the authorities of the Roman Catholic Church, but 
was the only possible course which the civil executive could take with- 
out arrogating to itself judicial powers. Instead of attempting to 
decide these questions the Commission passed a law providing for 
their early settlement by suits brought originally in the supreme 
court. One set of these cases has been decided in favor of the Roman 
Catholic Church and others are now nearly ready for decision, so that 
we may reasonably expect that within six months the whole matter 
may be disposed of, and when this is done the religious obstacles that 
seemed so formidable when the Philippine government was assumed 
by the United States will have been disposed of permanently and that 
fruitful source of disturbance and riot and discontent will have 
ceased. 

I have given in detail the steps taken to restore and maintain order 
in the Islands. I have mentioned the vigorous campaign of the Army 
and the moral restraint of its presence in the Islands, the promises 
of President McKinley as to gradual extension of self-government, 
the organization of the Federal party, the institution of municipal 
and provincial governments on a popular plan, the confirmation of 
President McKinley's policy by the act of Congress establishing a 
Philippine government, assuring a national assembly, and your fulfill- 
ment of the assurance, the establishment of courts with partly Ameri- 
can and partly Filipino judges, the punishment of predatory bands 
as civil felons, the establishment and growth of the insular con- 
stabulary as a sympathetic aid to Filipino municipal and provincial 
officials in suppressing lawlessness, and, finally, the removal by satis- 
factory compromises of the irritating church questions which had 
much to do with causing the original insurrection and, if unsettled, 
were pregnant with disorder. 



KEPOET OF SECRETAKY OF WAB. ON" THE PHILIPPINES. 23 

PRESENT CONDITION. 

Peace prevails throughout the Islands to-day in a greater degree 
than ever in the history of the Islands, either under Spanish or 
American rule, and agriculture is nowhere now impeded by the fear 
on the part of the farmer of the incursion of predatory bands. 
Under the policy already stated, inaugurated by the instructions of 
President McKinley to Secretary Eoot, in reference to the establish- 
ment of a temporary government in the Philippines, a community 
consisting of 7,000,000 people, inhabiting 300 different islands, 
many of whom were in open rebellion against the Government 
of the United States for four years, with all the disturbances follow- 
ing from robber and predatory bands which broke out from time to 
time, due to local causes, has been brought to a state of profound 
peace and tranquillity in which the people as a whole are loyally 
supporting the government in the maintenance of order. This is the 
first and possibly the most important accomplishment of the United 
States in the Philippines. 

THE POLITICAL CAPACITY AND INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT 
OF THE FILIPINOS UNDER SPAIN AND THE STEPS TAKEN BY 
THE PHILIPPINE GOVERNMENT FOR THEIR GENERAL AND 
POLITICAL EDUCATION. 

Very little practical political education was given by the Spaniards 
to the Filipinos. Substantially all the important executive offices 
in the Islands were assigned to Spaniards, and the whole government 
was bureaucratic. The provincial and municipal authorities were 
appointed and popular elections were unknown. The administration 
of the municipalities was largely under the supervision and direction 
of the Spanish priest of the parish. No responsibility for govern- 
ment, however local or unimportant, was thrust upon Filipinos in 
such a way as to give them- political experience, nor were the examples 
of fidelity to public interest sufficiently numerous in the officeholders 
to create a proper standard of public duty. The greatest difficulty 
that we have had to contend with in vesting Filipinos with official 
power in municipalities is to instill in them the idea that an office is 
not solely for private emolument. 

There was an educated class among the Filipinos under the Spanish 
regime. The University of St. Thomas, founded by the Dominican 
Order early in the seventeenth century, has furnished an academic 
education to many graduates. The same order, as well as the Jesuits 
and the Augustinians, maintained secondary and primary schools for 
the well-to-do. Quite a number of Filipinos were educated in Spain 
or France. As compared with the youth and young men of school 



24 KEPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON" THE PHILIPPINES. 

and college age in the Islands, the number, however, was very small. 
These men were educated either as lawyers, physicians, pharmacists, 
or priests. In politics their knowledge was wholly theoretical. They 
imbibed liberal ideas from the spread of republican doctrines in 
Spain, and the repressive policy of the Spanish Government, of 
course, operated only to encourage them. They were patriotic, and 
soon conceived of the Philippines as a nation. Eizal, a leader of 
Philippine thought, a poet, and a political writer, did not favor 
independence, for he believed his people not yet fitted, but he sought 
reform in the Spanish government of the Philippines and some popu- 
lar voice in it. 

As the protest against Spanish domination grew, the aspiration 
for complete independence took possession of many, and in the in- 
surrections which followed there were many patriots moved by as 
high ideals as those which have led to revolutions in any country. 
Their conceptions of liberty, of independence, of government were 
wholly ideal, however. When in the course of events they came to 
actual government they were unable to realize their conceptions, 
and only a one-man power or an oligarchy with class privilege, and 
no real civil rights for the so-called serving or obedient class, fol- 
lowed. They needed as much education in practical civil liberty as 
their more ignorant fellow-countrymen in reading, writing, and arith- 
metic. 

The efforts of the American Government to teach the ignorant their 
civil rights and to uplift them to self-governing capacity finds only a 
languid sympathy from many of the " ilustrados." From them comes 
the only objection to teaching English to the common people, lest they 
lose their national character ; as if it were necessary to keep the people 
confined to 16 barbarous dialects in order that they should be dis- 
tinctly Filipino. The real motive for the objection, whether con- 
scious or not, is in the desire of the upper class to maintain the rela- 
tion of the ruling class to the serving and obedient class. 

The educated Filipino has an attractive personality. His mind is 
quick, his sense of humor fine, his artistic sense acute and active; he 
has a poetic imagination; he is courteous in the highest degree; he 
is brave; he is generous; his mind has been given by his education 
a touch of the scholastic logicism ; he is a musician ; he is oratorical 
by nature. 

The educated Filipino is an aristocrat by Spanish association. He 
prefers that his children should not be educated at the public schools, 
and this accounts for the large private schools which the religious 
orders and at least one Filipino association are able to maintain. 
In arguing that the Philippines are entirely fit for self-government 
noAV, a committee of educated Filipinos once filed with the civil gov- 



EEPOKT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 25 

ernor a written brief in which it was set forth that the number of 
" ilustrados " in the Islands was double that of the offices — central, 
provincial, and municipal — and therefore the country afforded two 
" shifts " of persons competent to run the government. This, it was 
said, made clear the possibility of a good* government if independence 
was granted. The ignorance of the remainder of the people, admitted 
to be dense, made no difference. I cite this to show of how little im- 
portance an intelligent public opinion or an educated constituency is 
regarded in the community and government which man}^ of the edu- 
cated Filipinos look forward to as a result of independence. I do not 
say that there are not notable exceptions to this among leading 
Filipinos, but such persons are usually found among those who are 
not so impatient to lose American guidance in the government. In- 
deed, I am gratified to hear that the first bill which passed the Assem- 
bly was an appropriation of a million pesos for barrio schools. On 
the whole, however, there is reason for believing that were the govern- 
ment of the Islands now turned over to the class which likes to call 
itself the natural ruling class, the movement initiated by the present 
government to educate the ignorant classes would ultimately lose its 
force. The candor with which some of the representatives of the 
independista movement have spoken of the advantage for govern- 
mental purposes of having 80 per cent of the people in a serving or 
obedient class indicates this. 

No one denies that 80 per cent of the Filipino people are densely 
ignorant. They are in a state of Christian tutelage. They are child- 
like and simple, with no language but a local Malay dialect spoken in 
a few provinces; they are separate from the world's progress. The 
whole tendency under the Spaniards was to keep them ignorant and 
innocent. The Spanish public school system was chiefly on paper. 
They were for a long time subject completely to the control of the 
Spanish friar, who was parish priest and who generally did not 
encourage the learning of Spanish or great acquantance with the 
world at large. The world owes to the Spanish friar the Christiani- 
zation of the Filipino race. It is the only Malay or oriental race that 
is Christian. The friars beat back the wave of Mohammedanism 
and spread their religion through all the Islands. They taught the 
people the arts of agriculture, but they believed it best to keep them 
in a state of innocent ignorance. They did not encourage the coming 
into the Filipino local communities of Spaniards. They feared the 
influence of world knowledge. They controlled the people and 
preached to them in their own dialects. They lived and died among 
them. 

The friars left the people a Christian people — that is, a people with 
Western ideals. They looked toward Eome, and Europe, and America. 



26 REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

They were not like the Mohammedan or the Buddhist, who despise 
Western civilization as inferior. They were in a state of tutelage, ripe 
to receive modern Western conceptions as they should be educated to 
understand them. This is the reason why I believe that the whole 
Christian Filipino people ar6 capable by training and experience of 
becoming a self-governing people. But for the present they are igno- 
rant and in the condition of children. So, when the revulsion from 
the Spanish domination came, as it did, the native priest or the 
neighboring " ilustrado " or " cacique " led them into the insurrection. 
They are a brave people and make good soldiers if properly led. 
They learn easily, and the most striking fact in our whole experience 
in the Philippines is the eagerness with which the common Filipino 
agricultural laborer sends his children to school to learn English. 

There is no real difference between the educated and ignorant Fili- 
pinos that can not be overcome by the education of one generation. 
They are a capable people in the sense that they can be given a normal 
intellectual development by the same kind of education that is given 
in our own common school system. Now they have not intelligence 
enough to exercise the political franchise with safety to themselves 
or their country ; but I do not see why a common school education in 
English, with industrial teaching added, may not make the children 
of these people capable of forming an intelligent public opinion needed 
to sustain a popular government if, at the same time that the on- 
coming generations are being educated in schools, primary and indus- 
trial, those who are intelligent are being given a political education 
by actually exercising the power of the franchise and actually taking 
part in the government. 

As will be seen hereafter, the Philippine government has not funds 
enough to educate in primary and industrial schools all the present 
generation of school age, and unless some other source of funds than 
governmental revenues is found it will take longer than a generation 
to complete the primar}^ and industrial education of the common 
people. Until that is done, we ought not to lift our guiding hand 
from the helm of the ship of state of the Philippine Islands. With 
these general remarks as to the present unfitness of the Filipino 
people for popular self-government and their capacity for future 
development so that the}^ niay, by proper education, general and 
political, become a self-governing people, I come to the methods pur- 
sued by the Philippine government in furnishing to the Filipinos 
the necessary education. I shall consider the subject under two 
heads: 

1. Education in schools for the youth of school age. 

2. Practical political education by the extension, step by step, of 
political control to an eligible class. 



REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 27 

first: education in schools. 

Reference has already been made to the fact of the very great 
ignorance and illiteracy that prevails among the Filipino people. It 
is not too much to say that knowledge of Spanish is a fairly good 
indication whether an individual can be said to be educated. Sta- 
tistics show that but 7 per cent of the people of the Islands speak 
Spanish; all the others speak in the varying dialects, which among 
the civilized people number some 16. The Philippine people should 
be educated sufficiently to have a common medium of communica- 
tion, and every man, woman, and child should have the benefit of 
the primary education in that common medium. Eeading, writing, 
end arithmetic are necessary to enable the rural laborer and the small 
hemp, cocoanut, or tobacco farmer to make contracts for the sale of 
his products and to know what price he should receive for that which 
he has to sell. With this knowledge, too, he will soon be able to laiow 
his own rights and to resist the absolute control which is now fre- 
quently exercised over him by the local cacique. 

The necessity for a common school system was emphasized in the 
instructions of President McKinley to Secretary Root, and those re- 
sponsible for the government of the Islands have been earnest and 
active in seeking to establish one. The language selected for the 
schools is English. It is selected because it is the language of busi- 
ness in the Orient, because it is th© language of free institutions, and 
because it is the language which the Filipino children who do not 
know Spanish are able more easily to learn than they are to learn 
Spanish, and it is the language of the present sovereign of the Islands. 
The education in English began with the soldiers of the American 
Army, one of whom was detailed from each company to teach schools 
in the villages which had become peaceful. AVhen the Commission 
assumed authority it sent to the United States for 1,000 American 
teachers, and after the arrival of these pioneers in the Islands, a 
system of primary schools was inaugurated together with normal 
schools. 

Public educational work in the Islands is performed under the 
bureau of education, with the central office located in Manila, hav- 
ing 37 divisions, each in charge of a division superintendent, embrac- 
ing in all 379 school districts each in charge of a supervising teacher. 
The total number of schools in operation during the past year was : 
Primary schools, 3,435; intermediate schools, 162; arts and trades 
schools, 32 ; agricultural schools, 5 ; domestic-science schools, 17, and 
provincial high schools, 36, making a total of 3,687 and an increase 
from the previous year as follows: 327 primary schools, 70 inter- 
mediate schools, 15 arts and trades schools, 3 agricultural schools, and 



28 REPORT OF SECRETARY OP WAR OIT THE PHILIPPINES. 

9 domestic-science schools. There are engaged in the teaching of 
these schools at present TIT permanent American teachers and 109 
temporary appointees, and all of these are paid out of the central 
treasury. In addition to these there are what are known as Filipino 
insular teachers, numbering 465, who are paid out of the central treas- 
ury. In addition to these there are 5,656 municipal Filipino teachers, 
all of whom speak and teach English and who are paid out of the 
treasuries of the municipalities. 

The 6,000 Filipino teachers who are now teaching -English have re- 
ceived their English education from our normal schools or our Ameri- 
can teachers. Their number is growing, and they represent and are 
the most valuable educational asset we have acquired in working out 
our school system. The average annual salary of the Filipino insular 
teacher is 533.2 pesos a year, while that of municipal teachers is 210.36 
pesos. The Filipino insular teachers are drawn from graduates of nor- 
mal schools and also from the students sent by the government and at 
the expense of the government to the United States to be educated 
there. Forty-six of these students have recently returned from the 
United States and have been appointed as insular teachers at salaries 
ranging from 840 to 960 pesos per annum. The average paid to the 
American teacher is about $1,200 per annum. The total enrollment 
for the year, inclusive of the Moro Province — the schools in which 
are conducted under a separate system — was 479, 9 T8. This was 
in the month of March at the close of the school year, Avhen the 
enrollment reached its highest point. The average enrollment total 
by months was 346,245, of whom 62 per cent were bo3^s and 38 per 
cent were girls. The average daily attendance was 269,000, or a per- 
centage of attendance of about 85 per cent. The highest percentage 
of attendance was 94, in the city of Manila. The lowest percentage 
in some of the provinces was T8. The attendance and enrollment in 
schools begins in August, which is the beginning of the school year, 
and ends in March. As August is one of the wet months, the attend- 
ance begins at the lowest figure and increases gradually into the dry 
season until its highest point at the close of the school year in March. 

The central government this year for school purposes and construc- 
tion of schools has appropriated 3,500,000 pesos. The maintenance of 
primary schools is imposed by law upon the municipalities, and in- 
volves a further expenditure of nearly a million and a half pesos. In 
order to relieve distress incident to agricultural depression, it was 
found necessary to suspend the land tax, a part of the proceeds of 
which b}^ mandatory provision of law was appropriated to the support 
of municipal schools. The central government in the first year appro- 
priated a sujficient sum from the internal revenue to meet the deficit 
caused by the failure to impose the land tax, but in the present year 
it was only able to appropriate 50 per cent of the amount which 



REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 29 

would have been raised by the land tax, and next year no such appro- 
priation will be made, and it will be left optional with the province 
whether the land tax shall be imposed or not. 

The great difficulty in the matter of education in the Islands is the 
lack of funds to make it as extended as it should be. The suspension 
of the land tax is subjecting the educational system to a crisis, but 
the revival of agriculture in many parts of the Islands leads to the 
hope that the crisis may be successfully passed. It would be entirely 
possible to expend for the sole benefit of the Philippine people, with- 
out the least waste, upward of two or three millions of dollars annu- 
ally in addition to all that the government of the Philippine Islands — 
central, municipal, and provincial — can afford to devote to this 
object. We are not able to educate as they should be educated more 
than a half of the youth of school age in the Islands. The govern- 
ment, while contributing to the maintenance of high schools in each 
province, is devoting its chief attention to the spread of primary 
education, and in connection with primar}^ education, and, at its 
close in the intermediate schools, to industrial education. Primary 
and industrial education carried on until the child is 14 or 15 
years old is thought to be the best means of developing the 
Filipino people into a self-sustaining and self-governing people, 
and the present government has done all that it has been pos- 
sible to do in developing and maintaining a proper system for this 
purpose. The tendency toAvard the development of industrial educa- 
tion the world over has created such a demand for industrial teachers 
as to make it impossible for the Philippine government to secure as 
many as are needed for the purpose in the Islands, and in order to 
have these industrial teachers it must take the time to educate them 
as such, just as it did the Filipino primary teachers in English. 

There are now in the Islands, including art and trade schools, agri- 
cultural schools, and domestic-science schools, at least one industrial 
school to every province, and it is the purpose to increase this number 
as rapidly as resources and opportunity will permit. Under the in- 
fluence of the traditions of the Spanish regime, when manual labor 
seems to have been regarded as an evidence of servitude, it was at 
first impossible to secure pupils for the great manual training school 
in Manila. Boys preferred to be " escribientes " or clerks and gentle- , 
men rather than to learn to win a livelihood by the skill of their 
hands, but this has been rapidly overcome. In the insular school 
of arts and trades in Manila, where the plant and equipment is quite 
satisfactory, instruction is now given some 350 pupils in English, 
arithmetic, geography, mechanical drawing, woodworking (bench 
work, carving, turning, and cabinet making), ironworking (bench 
work, filing, blacksmithing, and iron machine work), and finishing, 
including painting and varnishing, to which will be added next year 



30 EEPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

boat building and wheelwrighting. At the present time there are on 
the waiting list some 200 pupils who seek admission but for whom 
no places are available. A large insular agricultural school is to 
be established in Manila for giving instruction in practical agricul- 
ture, and the money, 100,000 pesos, necessary for the building and 
construction has already been appropriated. 

The influence of the primary instruction in English is shown 
throughout the Islands by the fact that to-day more people through- 
out the Islands, outside of Manila and the large cities, speak Eng- 
lish than speak Spanish. A noticeable result of the government's 
activity in the establishment of English schools has been the added 
zeal in teaching English in private educational establishments. A 
Filipino school managed and taught only by Filipinos, called " Liceo," 
has some 1,500 pupils in Manila, and English is regularly taught as 
part of the curriculum of that school ; the Dominican order of friars, 
which is primarily an educational order, has schools in and about 
Manila with upAvard of 2,000 students, and English is now made a 
very important part of the curriculum of those schools. The Jesuits 
also have two very large schools in Manila, embracing some 1,000 or 
1,500 pupils drawn from all parts of the Islands, in which English is 
made an important branch of the study. There is considerable com- 
petition in this matter and there seems now to be a united effort to 
spread the knowledge of English in accordance with the government's 
policy. At times, as already intimated, a discordant note is heard in 
the suggestion that the American Government is seeking to deprive the 
Filipino of his native language. As his native language is really 15 or 
16 different dialects, this does not seem a great deprivation. It is pos- 
sible that some effort will be made to include in the primary instruction 
the reading and writing of the local dialect in the local schools. No 
objection can be made to this unless it shall interfere with the instruc- 
tion in English, which it is hoped it may not do. 

Should Congress be anxious to facilitate and hurry on the work 
of redeeming the Philippine Islands and making the Filipino people 
a self-governing community, it could take no more effective step than 
a permanent appropriation of two or three millions of dollars for 
ten or fifteen years to the primary and industrial education of the 
Filipino people, making it conditional on the continued appropria- 
tion by the Philippine government" of the same amount to educa- 
tional purposes which it has devoted and is now devoting annually 
to that purpose. The influence of the educational system introduced 
has not only been direct in the spread of education among the younger 
of the present generation, but it has also been an indirect means of 
convincing the Filipino people at large of the beneficent purpose 
of the American Government in its remaining in the Philippine 
Islands and of the sincerity of its efforts in the interest of their people. 



REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 31 

FILIPINO CADETS AT WEST POINT. 

Section 36 of the act of Congress, approved February 2, 1901, 
referring to Philippine Scouts, provides that— 

" When, in the opinion of the President, natives of the Philippine Islands 
shaU, by their services and character, show fitness for command, the President 
is authorized to make provisional appointments to the grades of second and 
first lieutenants from such natives, who, when so appointed, shall have the 
pay and allowances to be fixed by the Secretary of War, not exceeding those 
of corresponding grades of the Regular Array." 

As it is thought that better results will be obtained if a few young 
Filipinos, especially selected, be appointed to the United States Mili- 
tary Academy with a view to their being commissioned officers of 
scouts upon graduation, I strongly recommend that Congress, by 
appropriate legislation, authorize the appointment of seven young 
Filipinos, or one for about every million of inhabitants of those 
Islands, as cadets at the Military Academy at West Point. This 
action on the part of Congress would, in my judgment, tend to fur- 
ther increase the zeal and efficiency of a body of troops which has 
always rendered faithful and satisfactory services. 

second: practical political education. 

There is no doubt that the exercise of political power is the best 
possible political education and ought to be granted whenever the 
pupil has intelligence enough to perceive his own interest even in a 
rude practical way, or when other competent electors are sufficiently 
in the majority to avoid the injury likely to be done by a government 
of ignorance and inexperience. The Philippine government con- 
cluded that the only persons in the Philippines who had intelligence 
enough to make their exercise of political power useful to them as 
an education and safe as a govermnental experiment were those who 
spoke and wrote English or Spanish, or who paid $7.50 a year taxes, 
or whose capacity had been recognized in Spanish times by their 
appointment as municipal officials. Adult males who came within 
these classes, it was thought, ought to begin their political education 
by assuming political responsibility, and so they were made electors 
in municipal, provincial, and assembly elections, and embraced, as 
near as it can be estimated, about 12 to 15 per cent of the adult male 
population. Of course, as the common school education spreads, the 
electorate will increase. 

Let us now examine the political education which has been given 
in practice to these eligible electors and the results. 

MUNICIPALITIES AND PROVINCES. 

By the municipal code the old municipalities under the Spanish 
regime, which resembled the townships of the West and the towns of 



32 REPORT OP SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

New England, were authorized to reorganize under the American 
Government. They consisted generally of the poblacion, or the most 
centrally located and most populous settlement, with a number of 
barrios or outlying wards or villages, all within the municipality and 
under its control. The provisions of the code did not differ materially 
from those of similar codes in the United States, except that wherever 
possible and practicable the unobjectionable customs of the country 
were recognized and acquiesced in formally in the law. The towns 
were divided into classes and the salaries of the officials were limited 
accordingly^ The provincial code provided for the organization of 
governments in the provinces which had been recognized as provinces 
under the Spanish regime. Under the original provisions of that 
code the government of the province — legislative and executive — was 
under a provincial board, consisting of a governor and treasurer and 
a supervisor of roads and buildings. Other appointed officers were 
provided, as the prosecuting attorney and the secretary of the prov- 
ince, who did not sit on the provincial board. The governor was 
originally elected by the councilmen of all the towns of the province 
assembled in convention, the}^ themselves having previously been 
elected by the people. The treasurer and supervisor were each 
selected and appointed under the rules adopted in accordance with the 
merit system provided in a civil-service law, which was among the 
first passed by the Commission. 

One of the early difficulties in the maintenance of an efficient gov- 
ernment in the provinces was the poverty of the provinces and the 
lack of taxable resources to support any kind of a government at all. 
It was soon found that the provincial supervisor, who, it was hoped, 
might be an American engineer, was too expensive a burden for the 
province to carry. For a time the district superintendent of educa- 
tion of the province was made the third member of the provincial 
board instead of the supervisor, whose office was abolished. This, 
however, did not work well, because the time of the superintendent 
was needed for his educational duties. Subsequently, therefore, it 
was thought wise to provide a third member of the board, who served 
with but little compensation and who was elected as the governor was 
elected. The system of electing the governor by convention of coun- 
cilmen of all the towns of the province was changed, so that now the 
governor and the third member of the board are elected by direct 
popular vote, while the treasurer is still appointed. It will be 
seen that, in this way, the government of the towns is completely 
autonomous, subject only to visitation and disciplinary action of the 
governor of the province and of the governor-general on appeal. 
The provincial government now. though not originally, is completely 
autonomous in the sense that a majority of the board which governs 



EEPOKT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 33 

the province are elected by the people. The duties of the provincial 
treasurer are burdensome, complex, and important to such a degree 
as to make it impossible thus far to find Filipinos who have been able 
to master the duties of the office and to give satisfaction therein, al- 
though there are quite a number of Filipino assistant treasurers and 
subordinates in the office of treasurer who give reasonable ground to 
expect that the American treasurers may be in a reasonable time 
supplanted by Filipino treasurers. 

The question now arises what has been shown in the government of 
these municipalities and of the provinces in respect to the capacity of 
the Filipinos for complete self-government in local matters? It is 
undoubtedly true that the municipalities would be much more effi- 
cient had the policy been pursued of appointing Americans to the 
important offices in the municipalities, but there would have been 
two great objections to this course, one that the municipal govern- 
ment would not have attracted the sympathetic attention of the peo- 
ple as the present municipalities have — and we would thus have lost 
a valuable element in making such government a success — and the 
other that the educational effect upon the people in training them for 
self-government would have been much less. 

When I say that the development of municipal government in the 
Philippines has been satisfactory, I am far from saying that it has 
been without serious defects. All I mean is that considering the two- 
fold object in view — first governmental, second educational — the re- 
sult thus far with all its shortcomings shows progress toward both 
ends and vindicates the course taken. 

Up to the time of our occupation, the government had represented to 
the Filipino an entity entirely distinct from himself with which he 
had little sympathy and which was engaged in an attempt to obtain as 
much money as possible from him in the form of taxes. He had been 
taught to regard an office as the private property of the person hold- 
ing it and in respect to which ordinary practice justified the holder 
in making as much profit from it as he could. The idea that a public 
office is a public trust had not been implanted in the Filipino mind by 
experience, and the conception that an officer who fails in his duty by 
embezzlement or otherwise was violating an obligation that he owed 
to each individual member of the public, he found it difficult to grasp. 
He was apt to regard the robbing of the government by one of its 
officers as an affair in which he had little or no interest and in which, 
not infrequently, his sympathies were against the government. As a 
consequence, the chief sense of restraint felt by municipal officials in 
handling public funds comes from a fear of inspection by the central 
government and its prosecution. The fear of condemnation by the 
public opinion of the local community has a much less deterrent force, 
33483—08 3 



34 BEPOET OF SECKETARY OF WAR Oli THE PHILIPPINES. 

even if the official is to seek reelection. The sense of responsibility for 
the government they control and whose officers they elect is brought 
home to the people of a municipality with slowness and difficulty. 
This is the political education that is going on in the Filipino munici- 
palities. We are making progress, but we must be patient, for it is 
not the task of a day to eradicate traditions and ideas that had their 
origin in a system of government under which this people lived for 
centuries. 

Hence when we find that there is still a considerable percentage of 
Filipino municipal officers who have to be removed and prosecuted 
for embezzlement, we must not be discouraged. Early in the Amer- 
ican occupation we had to prosecute sixteen or seventeen American 
provincial treasurers for defalcations in public funds. It was bit- 
terly humiliating for the dominant race to furnish such an example, 
when we were assuming to teach the Filipinos the art of self-govern- 
ment. The American embezzlers were all promptly sent to Bilibid 
Penitentiary for long terms. This had an excellent effect upon both 
Americans and Filipinos in the Islands. The defalcations were due 
to a lack of good material available for these positions in the Islands. 
To-day the American provincial treasurers are of the highest order 
of public servants and are a credit to the American name. Their 
example has been of the utmost benefit in the training of Filipino 
municipal and provincial officials. 

Another difficulty arising from a similar cause that we have had to 
meet and overcome has been the disposition of municipal councils to 
vote all of the available funds for the payment of their own salaries 
and leave nothing for the improvement or repair of roads, the con- 
struction of buildings, or the payment of school-teachers, and this 
although the law may, by mandatory provision, have set aside certain 
definite shares of the public funds for such purposes. These evils 
have had to be remedied by placing the funds in the hands of the 
provincial treasurer so as to secure the payment of the amount re- 
quired by law to be devoted to educational purposes and by imposing 
upon the discretion of common councils to vote salaries from their 
funds a limitation that the total of salaries shall not exceed a 
certain percentage of the total funds in control of the town. 

The people of the towns seem fully to appreciate the value of roads, 
but when it comes to exerting themselves and denying themselves 
for the purpose of securing the great benefit of good roads, they have 
not thus far nerved themselves to the sacrifice. Many miles of road 
have been constructed by the central government and then turned over 
to the municipalities for maintenance, with the result that in one or 
two years of the torrential rains the roads have become nothing 
but quagmires without any work of maintenance or repair done on 
them. One of the common means throughout the United States for 



EEPORT OF SECRETAEY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 35 

building roads or repairing them is to require all male adults to work 
upon the roads four or five days of the year, or perhaps a longer period, 
or to commute the work by payment of a tax. This would be the 
natural method of repairing roads in the Philippines; but the diffi- 
culty is that it was'the method adopted by the Spaniards, and in the 
Spanish times the power of the local authorities to direct free labor 
upon the roads for a certain period of time was so greatly abused and 
perverted to the seeking of personal vengeance and the private profit 
of the local authorities that it has been impossible to obtain any 
popular support for a system based on the same principle, and good 
roads have been allowed to go to destruction rather than to run the 
risk of a recurrence of the old abuses. 

A difficulty in connection with the maintenance of roads may be 
mentioned here. The old-time method of transportation in the Phil- 
ippines was by a carabao or ox cart with a rigid axle and with solid 
wheels, the rims of which were so narrow as to cut like a knife into 
any road over which they traveled. Laws have been passed from 
time to time imposing a penalty for using wheels on public roads with 
tires less than a certain width, but it has not been possible to secure 
such an administration of the law by the provincial governments as 
to prevent the continuance of this abuse, although means have been 
taken to furnish at a very reasonable rate sets of wheels with tires 
of sufficient width to avoid road destruction. Local officials have been 
loath, when dependent for their continuance in office upon the votes 
of their fellow-citizens, to enforce a law the wisdom of which they 
fully recognize, but the unpopularity of which they also know. 

It has been found that sanitary measures can not be safely 
intrusted to municipal authorities for enforcement whenever emer- 
gencies arise, but that some local agency of the central government 
must be created for the purpose. At first full power was given to 
the municipality to determine by ordinance where cemeteries might 
be established, having regard to the health of the town. This proved 
a most convenient instrument for partisan abuse in the religious 
controversies arising between the Roman Catholics and the Agli- 
payans. An Aglipayan municipal council would require by ordi- 
nance the immediate closing of a Roman Catholic cemetery, although 
it was not in the least dangerous to health, and then would permit 
an Aglipayan cemetery much nearer the town and in a really objec- 
tionable place. Partisans of the Roman Church in control of other 
municipalities would abuse their powers in the same way. The con- 
sequence was that the central and provincial authorities had to be 
given direct supervisory control of this matter. 

Another defect in many Filipino towns I have already referred to is 
the evil of caciquism. Too often the presidente and other town officers 
use their offices to subject the ignorant residents of their respective 



36 KEPORT OF SECRETAEY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

towns to their business control in the sale of farm products. The 
officer acts as the middleman in the sale and takes most of the profit' 
from his constituent. The evil is hard to reach because the same 
power which compelled the sale can usually compel silen€e and no 
complaint is heard from the victims until, dimly realizing the injustice 
done them, they resort to criminal outbreaks and bloody vengeance. 
While it is too much to hope for the complete eradication of this abuse 
until the laborer shall acquire enough education to know his rights 
before the law and how to assert them, there has been much improve- 
ment in this regard since the American occupation. 

The evil of caciquism shows itself in a more flagrant form when 
Filipino municipal or even provincial officials are vested with gov- 
ernmental control over non-Christian tribes, or others not of their 
own race, scattered through the Christian Filipino provinces. These 
people living in small settlements are slowly working toward a bet- 
ter civilization under the influence of education and are capable of 
much greater progress if properly treated. Such settlements were 
originally placed under the regular Filipino provincial and munici- 
pal governments within whose territorial jurisdiction they happened 
to be, but the abuses and oppression to which they were subjected 
necessitated an entirely different policy with respect to them and the 
organization of separate governments controlled directly from Ma- 
nila under the interior department. Mr. Worcester, the secretary of 
the interior, has given especial attention to the care and development 
of these non-Christian tribes. It has been necessary to organize in 
Northern Luzon three or four subprovinces within the territorial 
limits of the Filipino provinces and to secure the protection of the 
non-Christians by the appointment generally of an American lieu- 
tenant-governor. This is also true in the province of Misamis and 
of Surigao in Mindanao, where it was found impossible to induce 
the provincial officers to spend the money appropriated out of the 
insular treasury for the benefit of the people for educational and 
road improvements directed by the central authority. The fact that 
the recent, and for a time seemingly incurable, tendency to disturb- 
ance in Samar has grown out of a similar cause in that island, I 
have already commented on in connection with another subject. 

The city of Manila has not been given autonomous government. 
It is under the control of a municipal board of five persons appointed 
by the central government and is governed therefore as 'Washington 
or the City of Mexico is governed. In the proper improvement of 
Manila, some six or eight millions of dollars had to be expended and 
much business experience and foresight were required to build the new 
waterworks and the new sewer system, to repave the streets, to canalize 
the ester OS, or creeks, to organize an effective police force and a new fire 
department. It was thought that it would not be safe to intrust the 



REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 37 

conduct of such important business matters to a body selected by the 
electorate of Manila for the first time. The city of Manila has been 
well governed. Very large sums of money have been expended in 
most extensive improvements and not the slightest scandal or dis- 
honesty has been charged in any of the city administration. It has 
offered a most useful model for other municipalities in the Islands 
to follow and has lent her engineers, her policemen, and her fire- 
men to other towns to help the latter to better organization. 

This review of shortcomings in municipal governments in the Phil- 
ippines should not have the effect of discouraging those who are 
interested in the success of the experiment. They should be reminded 
that in the United States, municipal government has not been such a 
shining success. Moreover, the defects pointed out are not found ift 
all Filipino towns. They have been referred to only to qualify prop- 
erly the statement, which I do not hesitate to make, that autonomous 
municipal governments are making good progress and are gradually 
accomplishing the purposes for which they were created, though not 
so efficiently as with a people more used to governing themselves, 
more trained and educated in the assertion of their rights, and imbued 
with a higher standard of public duty. A¥hen those responsible for 
the policy of autonomy in municipal and provincial governments as- 
sert that it is progressing successfully, they find their words to be 
construed by enthusiastic theorists, who are convinced a priori of the 
complete fitness of the Filipinos to govern themselves, as completely 
establishing the correctness of their view; and when, on the other 
hand, they point out the defects in such local governments they meet 
the cry made by pessimists and by thick and thin adherents of the 
English crown-colony system that this is an admission of failure and 
a concession that we have gone far too fast in intrusting local govern- 
mental power of the Filipinos. 

The truth, as I conceive it, lies between the two extreme positions, 
and while the policy adopted does not secure the best municipal 
government which might be secured under American agents, it does 
provide a fairly good government, with a training and experience 
and educational influence upon the people which is slowly but pro- 
gressively curing the defects incident to a lack of political training 
and proper political ideals. The result indicates neither that the 
Filipinos are fitted at once for complete self-government nor does it 
justify the view that they may not be ultimately made capable of 
complete self-government by a gradual extension of partial self-gov- 
ernment as they may becom.e more and more fit to exercise it. 

When we come to the provincial governments, we naturally have 
to deal with a higher order of public servants, and although we here 
and there find the defects I have described as occurring in municipal 
governments, they are less glaring and less discouraging. The truth 



38 REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

is, that with the guidance of the provincial treasurer, who is an 
American, and the sense of added responsibility that the presence of 
two Filipinos in the provincial board has instilled in them, the pro- 
vincial officials begin to take pride in the good condition of their 
province. This has been stimulated by close and constant correspond- 
ence between them and the central government at Manila, repre- 
sented by the assistant executive secretary, Mr. Frank Carpenter, in 
which provincial matters are discussed, by an annual conference of 
provincial governors at Manila, and by conditional contributions 
from the central government to provincial funds for various forms of 
provincial efficiency, and is evidenced by the greater amounts devoted 
Iq^ the provinces to the construction of public buildings, the repair 
and construction of roads and bridges and by the husbanding of 
resources and the keeping down of salaries. 

The system of examination of the finances of the municipalities 
and of the provinces is now, as conducted in the Islands, very com- 
plete, and in one large printed volume is published the balance sheet 
of every province and of every municipality in the Islands for each 
fiscal year, so that it is possible to take a bird's-e3^e view each year of 
the financial progress made in the management of each province and 
town. The improvement in the financial condition of the provinces 
over and above what it Avas four or five years ago itself speaks 
forcibly in favor of the progress which has been made by Filipinos 
in provincial government. 

One of the early difficulties in provincial govenurient already 
pointed out was the lack of tax resources, which prevented payment 
of adequate salaries or the making of much-needed improvements. 
With the sympathetic aid and suggestion of the central government, 
and by the voluntary assumption of greater taxes by the people, 
all the provinces, save two or three, have made themselves self- 
supporting and have been enabled to pay good salaries. They differ 
largely in the amount of money that they have been able to devote 
to the construction of public buildings and to roads and bridges, but 
they are certainly beginning to appreciate the necessity for effort in 
this direction, and while they have refused thus far to adopt the 
system of a few days' enforced labor commutable by taxes, they are 
gradually coming to the adoption of a poll tax for public roads 
which in its essence and its alternatives will ultimately be an equiva- 
lent of such a system. 

The report of the Auditor of the Islands shows a most gratifymg 
improvement in the financial condition of the towns and provinces 
for the last five years. ^Vhile the financial condition is not invariably 
indicative of the general character of a municipal or provincial gov- 
ernment, a steady improvement in it from year to year is reasonably 
good evidence that matters of government are mending in every way. 



REPORT OF SECRETARY OE WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 39 

The question of roads and bridges has not yet been solved in the 
Philippines. There remains yet an enormous amount of labor and 
capital to be expended for this purpose, but the seeds have been sown 
which I am convinced will lead, under the executive force and 
great interest of Mr. W. Cameron Forbes, the secretary of com- 
merce and police, to the adoption of a caminero system of road 
repairs and maintenance which will make the intercommunication 
by wagon road between the various parts of the various islands satis- 
factory. I shall not stop to dwell on the great inherent difficulty 
that there is in the construction and repair of roads in the Pliilip- 
pines. The absence of suitable material and the destructive effect 
of every wet season sufficiently account for the present unsatisfactory 
condition in this respect. The principle rigidly adopted and enforced 
now is, however, that no bridge and no public building shall be con- 
structed of anything but permanent materials — either concrete, hard 
wood, or metal — or iron or steel, and that no road shall be built except 
in a manner which shall enable local authorities, with reasonable ex- 
pense, to keep it in permanent repair. In times past the necessity for 
haste and supposed economy has led to the use of softer woods and 
temporary methods of construction, which are now turning out to be 
much more costly than if the original expenditure had been greater. 

CIVIL SERVICE. 

The organization and maintenance of the central government were 
directed not only with a view to its efficiency, but also to its educa- 
tional effect upon the Philippine people. This is shown in the ap- 
pointment of three Filipinos to constitute three-eighths of the insu- 
lar legislature, as well as by the opportunity offered to Filipinos to 
enter the civil service under a civil-service law embodying the merit 
system. In the beginning it was difficult to work Filipinos into the 
bureaus of the central government, because few of them knew Eng- 
lish and fewer understood the American business and official methods, 
which, of course, obtained in the new government. As the years 
went on, however, under great pressure from the Commission, the 
proportion of Filipinos in the service was increased from year to 
year. Many natives had learned English and had shown an in- 
creasing aptitude for the work of the civil service. Still in many 
of the bureaus the progress of Filipinos to the most responsible 
places is necessarily slow and the proportion of them to be found 
in the positions of high salaries is not as large as it ought to be in the 
near future. The winnowing-out process, however, is steadily reduc- 
ing the American employees in the civil service. It has become a 
body of highly deserving, faithful public servants, whom, it is hoped, 
the Philippine government will make permanent provision for by 



40 



REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 



secure tenure for a certain number of years with a reasonable retiring 
pension. 

As was inevitable in the complete organization of a government 
effected within a few months, experience indicated that greater econ- 
omy might be secured by a reduction in the number of bureaus and 
bureau chiefs, by the consolidation of offices and bureaus, and by the 
still further substitution of competent Filipinos for higher-priced 
Americans. 

It is now nearly three years ago, therefore, since a committee of 
insular officials with Commissioner Forbes as chairman was appointed 
to make a vigorous investigation into the entire governmental sys- 
tem. The committee made radical recommendations as to curtail- 
ment, most of which were adopted and resulted in a verj^ material 
decrease in the cost of government and increase in the proportion of 
Filipino employees. 

Tn the department of justice, including the judiciary, the propor- 
tion of Filipinos had always been high. The chief justice of the 
supreme court and two of his associates were Filipinos, while nearly 
half of the judges of the courts of first instance were also natives. 
All but two of the prosecuting attorneys in the 35 provinces, all the 
justices of the peace, and nearly all the court officers were Filipinos. 
For two years the attorney-general of the Islands has been a Filipino. 

The changes in the proportion of Filipino civil servants to the 
whole number from year to year can be seen in the following table : 



• 


Americans. 


Filipinos. 


1901 . 


2,044 


2,662 


1902 a 


1903 


2,777 
3,228 
3,307 


2,697 


1904 


3,377 
4,023 


1905 


1906 a • 


1907 


2,616 


3,902 







« statistics not available. 



CIVIL RIGHTS. 



Before discussing the provision for the national assembly and its 
influences, educational and otherwise, I must refer to the effort of 
President McKinley to extend to the Filipinos the guaranties of life, 
liberty, and property, secured by the Federal Constitution to those 
within Federal jurisdiction. The guaranties assured in the. instruc- 
tions of Mr. McKinley included all those of the Federal Constitution 
except the right to bear arms and to trial by jury. 

The right to bear arms is one that can not safely yet be extended 
to the people of the Philippines, because there are among those 
people men given to violence, who with the use of arms would at 



REPOKT OF SECRETARY OF WAPt ON THE PHIIJPPINES. 41 

once resort to ladronism as a means of livelihood. The tempta- 
tion would be too great and ought not to be encouraged. Nor are 
the people fit for the introduction of a jury system. Not yet has 
any considerable part of the community become sufficiently imbued 
with the sense of responsibility for the government and with its 
identification with the government. This responsibility and identi- 
fication are necessary before jurors-can sit impartially between soci- 
ety and the prisoner at the bar. Without it they are certain always 
to release the prisoner and to sympathize with him in the prosecu- 
tion against him. The fair treatment of the prisoner is sufficiently 
secured in a country never having had a jury trial by the absolute 
right of appeal from the decision of a single judge to the decision 
of seven judges, with a writ of error thence to the Supreme Court 
of the United States. It may be that in the future it will seem wise 
gradually to proAdde for a jury in various classes of cases, but at 
present it would be premature. 

The civil rights conferred b}' Mr. McKinley's instructions were 
expressly confirmed by the organic act of July 1, 1902. It has been 
the purpose of the Philippine government to make the extension of 
these rights a real thing and a benefit for the poorer Filipino, and 
progress is being made in this direction. The great obstacle to it 
arises from the ignorance of the people themselves as to what their 
rights are and their lack of knowledge as to how those rights may 
be asserted. 

The work of impressing a knowledge of these things upon the 
people goes, however, rapidly on, and with the education in English 
of a new generation and their succession to the electorate, we can be 
certain that the spread of education as to popular rights and the 
means of maintaining them will be wider and wider, until we can 
have a whole community who know their rights, and knowing, dare 
maintain them. 

Charges have been made that the existing Philippine government 
has not properly preserved these guaranties of civil rights. It is true 
that the Commission has, in effect, suspended these guaranties in a 
condition equivalent to one of war in some of the provinces, and has 
been sustained in so doing by the supreme court of the Islands and 
of the United States. It is also true that during a condition equiv- 
alent to war the Commission provided that no one should advocate 
independence, even by peaceable means, because agents of insurrec- 
tion were inciting actual violence under the guise of such peaceable 
propaganda. AVith the coming of peace, the statute ceased to have 
effect. To-day, however, the writ of habeas corpus runs without 
obstruction. The liberty of the press and of free speech is real. 
There is no censorship of the press and no more limitation upon its 
editors than there is in the city of Washington. The publication of 



42 REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

criminal libel or seditious language calculated and intended to cause 
public riot and disturbance is punishable in Manila and the Philip- 
pines as it is in many of the States of the Union. This freedom of 
discussion and this opportunity to criticise the government, educate 
the people in a political way and enable them more intelligently to 
exercise their political rights. 

THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. 

In recommending to Congress the provision for a national assem- 
bly contained in the organic act of the Philippine government, Sec- 
retary Root and the Commission were moved by the hope and belief 
that the promise in the act, conditioned, as its fulfillment was, 
on the existence of peace in the Islands, would stimulate activity 
on the part of all Filipinos having political ambition to bring about 
tranquillity. In this respect, as already pointed out, the result has 
abundantly vindicated their judgment. They were further moved 
by the conviction that this step toward greater popular self-gov- 
ernment would strengthen the hands of the Government by secur- 
ing from the people readier acquiescence in, and greater obedience 
to, measures which their representatives had joined in passing, than 
when they were the decrees of an alien government. They further 
believed that by means of the assembly much more exact and prac- 
tical knowledge of the needs of the country would be brought to the 
law-making . power than in any other way. Finally, they thought 
that the inauguration of such an assembly would be a most impor- 
tant step in the main plan or policy of educating Filipinos in the 
science and practice of popular representative government. They 
were aware of the possible danger that this was a step too far in ad- 
vance. They did not deny that on the part of a number elected there 
would be a strong inclination to obstruct the smooth working of exist- 
ing government on lines of political and material progress. They 
anticipated the probability that in the first assembly elected the ma- 
jority would be in favor of immediate independence; but in spite of 
all this they were clear in their forecast that the responsibilities of 
power would have both a sobering and educational effect that would 
lead ultimately to conservatism of action and to strengthening the 
existing government. 

Let us now consider what has happened in the electoral campaign 
for the assembly and in its early life as a legislative body. 

The powerful influence for good and for peace exercised by the 
Federal Party in the period just after Mr. McKinley's second election 
I have dwelt upon at another place. The main purpose and prin- 
ciple of the party was peace under the sovereignty of the United 
States* In drafting a platform its leaders had formulated a plank 



REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 43 

favoring the organization of the Islands into a Territory of the 
United States, with a view to its possibly becoming a State. From 
this plank it took its name. In the first two or three years after its 
successful effort to bring on peace, many prominent Filipinos having 
political ambition became members, and in the gubernatorial elec- 
tions the great majority of governors elected were Federals. And 
so substantially all who filled prominent offices in the government by 
appointment, including the judges, were of that partj^ Then dissen- 
sion arose among prominent leaders and some withdrew from the 
party. The natural opposition to a government party led to the 
organization of. other parties, especially among those known as In- 
transigentes. The Federal Party had founded an organ, the Demo- 
cracia, early in its existence. The opponents of the government look- 
ing to immediate independence founded a paper called the Eenaci- 
miento. The latter was edited with especial ability and with a parti- 
san spirit against the American Government. 

For two years before the election of the Assembly the Filipinos 
who sympathized with the Renacimiento were perfecting their organ- 
ization to secure a majority in the assembly. Many groups were 
formed, but they all were known as the Partido Nacionalista. There 
was some difference as to whether to this title should be added the word 
" inmediatista," but the great majority favored it. The party is gen- 
erally known as the Nacionalista Party. During much of these same 
two years, the Federal Party was dormant. The proposition for state- 
hood did not awaken enthusiasm anywhere. Many of the leaders were 
in office and felt no necessity for vigorous action. The quarrel between 
some of the directors had given the party paralysis. The party was 
not organized for political controversy with another party at the 
polls. It was merely an organization to give effective resultant 
force to the overwhelming feeling in favor of peace under United 
States sovereignty, and it was not adapted to a political fight on 
issues that were not in existence when it was at the height of its power 
for usefulness. On the other han(i, in the Federal Party were many 
of the ablest and most conservative of the Filipinos, and it seemed 
wise that this nucleus should be used to form a party that represented 
conservatism on the issue as to independence, which the opponents of 
the government determined to force into the campaign for members 
of the assembly. It was an issue hardly germane to the subject- 
matter within the jurisdiction of the assembly, but it had to be met. 
The issue whether the Islands should have immediate independence 
turned on the question whether the Filipino people are now fit for 
complete self-government. Upon this question it was. entirely 
natural that the burden should fall upon those who asserted the nega- 
tive, and it is not strange that the electors, or a majority of them, 



44 REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

should believe themselves and by their votes decide themselves to be 
competent. 

Some six months before the elections, there sprung from the ashes 
of the Federal Party a party which, rejecting the statehood idea, de- 
clared itself in favor of making the Philippines an independent nation 
by gradual and progressive acquisition of governmental control until 
the people should become fitted by education and practice under 
American sovereignty to enjoy and maintain their complete inde- 
pendence. It was called the Partido Nacionalista Progresista. It 
is generally known as the Progresista Party. The Progresista lead- 
ers were late in the field and were somewhat at a disadvantage 
on this account; but after they entered the fight they were ener- 
getic and vigorous. They did not mince words. They took the 
position fully and flatly that the people of the Philippines were not 
fitted for immediate independence and complete self-government 
and needed much education and experience before they should 
become so. It was natural to suppose that the cry of complete fitness 
for self-government was the popular one and that it would attract 
votes. This impression showed itself in a somewhat amusing way. 
The first independence party, as I have said, called itself the Partido 
Nacionalista Inmediatista. The title and organization were not rad- 
ical enough for a group that broke away and called itself Partido 
Nacionalista Urgentissima, which was supposed to indicate a party 
whose yearning for independence was greater than that of those who 
wished it immediately. This was followed by the organization of a 
new group who showed that they were not to be outdone in the 
fervor and anxiety with which they sought independence and votes 
for their candidates by calling their party Partido Nacionalista 
Explosivista. 

The campaign in the last two or three months was carried on with 
great vigor. The Nacionalistas had the advantage of being under- 
stood to be against the government. This, with a people like the 
Filipino people, who had been taught to regard the government as an 
entity separate from the people, ta*xing them and prosecuting them, 
was in itself a strong reason for popular sympathy and support. The 
Progresistas were denounced as a party of officeholders. The gov- 
ernment was denounced as extravagant and burdensome to the peo- 
ple. In many districts the Nacionalista candidates promised that if 
they were returned immediate independence would follow. There 
were quite a number of candidates in country and remote districts 
where the controversy was not heated who did not declare them- 
selves on the main question, and maintained an independence of any 
party. They were known as Independientes. Then, there were other 
Independientes who declared themselves independent of party, but in 
favor of immediate independence. 



BEPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINE^. 45 

The elections were held on July 30. Members were elected from 
80 districts into which the Christian Filipino provinces were 
divided. The result of the canvass was the election of 16 Progresis- 
tas, 1 Catolico, 20 Independientes, 31 Nacionalistas, 7 Inmediatistas, 
4 Independistas, and 1 Nacionalista Independiente, in all 80 members. 

The total vote registered and cast did not exceed 104,000, although 
in previous gubernatorial elections the total vote had reached nearly 
150,000. The high vote at the latter elections may be partly explained 
by the fact that at the same elections town officers were elected, and 
the personal interest of many candidates drew out a larger number 
of electors. But the falling off was also in part due, doubtless, to the 
timidity of conservative voters, who, because of the heat of the 
campaign, preferred to avoid taking sides. This is not a permanent 
condition, however, and I doubt not that the meeting of the assembly 
and the evident importance of its functions when actually performed 
will develop a much greater popular interest in it, and the total 
vote will be largely increased at the next election. 

I opened the assembly in your name. The roll of the members re- 
turned on the face of the record was called. An appropriate oath 
was administered to all the members and the assembly organized by 
selecting Senor Sergio Osmeiia as its speaker or presiding officer. 
Seiior Osmeiia has been one of the most efficient fiscals, or prosecuting 
attorneys, in the Islands, having conducted the government prosecu- 
tions in the largest province of the Islands, the province and island 
of Cebu. He was subsequently elected governor, and by his own ac- 
tivity in going into every part of the island, he succeeded in enlisting 
the assistance of all the people in suppressing ladronism, which had 
been rife in the mountains of Cebu for thirty or forty years, so that 
to-day there is absolute peace and tranquillity throughout the island. 
He is a young man not 30, but of great ability, shrewdness, high 
ideals, and yet very practical in his methods of dealing with men and 
things. The assembly could have done nothing Avhick indicated its 
good sense so strongly as the selection of Senor Osmeiia as its presid- 
ing officer. 

Many successful candidates for the assembly seem to have embraced 
the cause of the Inmediatistas without having thought out deliber- 
ately any plan by which a policy of immediate independence could be 
carried out. They joined the party and united in its cry because it 
was a popular one and because they thought that this was an easy 
method of being elected, or rather because they thought that without 
this, election would be difficult. When the assembly met it was quite 
apparent that the great majority were much more anxious to vindi- 
cate their election as a dignified, common-sense, patriotic branch of 
the legislature by a conservative course than to maintain consistency 
between their acts as legislators and their ante-election declarations. 



46 REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

There are, of course, some members who are likely at times to make 
speeches containing violent language, but on the whole there seemed 
to be during my stay in the Islands, of two or three weeks after the 
organization of the assembly, a very earnest wish that the assembly 
should show the conservatism which many of us believe exists in the 
Philippine people, gather than it should give a weapon to the enemies 
of the people and popular government by extravagance and useless 
violence of speech. 

Since I left the Islands the Assembly has voted for two resident 
commissioners to represent the Islands at Washington as provided in 
the organic act of the Philippine government. These commissioners 
are elected by the Assembly and the Commission sitting in separate 
session. The two candidates tendered by the Assembly to the Com- 
mission and accepted by the latter were Mr. Benito Legarda, at pres- 
ent one of the Filipino Commissioners, and Mr. Pablo Ocampo, of 
Manila. Mr. Legarda is one of the founders of the Federal Party 
and a Progresista. He has been many times in the United States and 
speaks English. He is one of the most prominent and successful 
business men in the Islands, and a public-spirited citizen of high 
character. Mr. Ocampo was an active sympathizer with the insurrec- 
tion and acted as its treasurer. He was deported to the island of 
Guam by the military authorities in the days of the military govern- 
ment. He is a prominent and able member of the bar of the Islands 
and a man of high character. He took part in the organization of 
the Nacionalista Party which he wished to have called Unionista. He 
is understood to have objected to the word " inmediatista " and to 
have withdrawn from the party on that account. 

As a shibboleth — as a party cry — immediate independence has 
much force, because it excites the natural pride of the people, but few 
of their number have ever worked out its consequences, and when 
they have done so they have been willing to postpone that question 
until some of the immediate needs of the people have been met. 1 
may be wrong, but my judgment is that the transfer of real power by 
giving to the people part of the legislative control of the Christian 
provinces sobers their leaders with the sense of responsibility and 
teaches them some of the practical difficulties of government. They 
wish to vindicate their view in respect to their fitness to govern them- 
selves completely by exercising the power of the government which 
has been accorded to them in a way to make the people of the United 
States and of the world believe that when greater power is extended, 
they may be trusted to exercise that with equal discretion and con- 
servative comlnon sense. They are now a real part of the government 
of the Islands. Nothing can be done affirmatively without the con- 
sent of the Assembly. They have been through one election and have 



EEPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 47 

made election promises. Manj^ of those promises, such as the prom- 
ises of immediate independence, were of course entirely beyond the 
authority of the promisers. AYhen they go back to their constituents 
at the next election they will find facing them not only their ante- 
election promises, but also responsibility for legislation and failure 
to legislate which will introduce new issues of a practical character, 
and will necessitate explanation and a caution of statement that was 
entirely absent in the first campaign. All this can not but have a 
wholesome effect upon the politics of the Filipinos and the Philip- 
pines. I do not for a moment guarantee that there will not at times be 
radical action by the Assembly, which can not meet the approval of 
those who understand the legislative needs of the Islands, but all I 
wish to say is that the organization and beginning of the life of the 
Assembly have disappointed its would-be critics and have given 
great encouragement to those who were responsible for its extension 
of political power. 

The Inmediatistas, having a majority in the Assembly, are prone 
to divide into groups. * The Independientes are organizing as a party, 
drawing tighter party lines, and at times act with the Progresistas, 
who, with their IT votes, are enjoying the advantage of the minority 
party in maintaining a solidarity and party discipline that it is im- 
possible for the leaders of the majority and the controlling party 
to attain. It would not be surprising if at the next election there 
should be a readjustment of party lines and division on other issues 
than those which controlled at the first election. 

While I was in the Islands, provincial elections were held, at which 
were elected governors and third members of the provincial boards. 
The elections were held on party lines. The total vote exceeded 
that at the Assembly by more than 50 per cent. Of the governors 
elected, 15 were Nacionalista and 15 were Progresista. Of the third 
members, 15 were Nacionalista, 13 were Progresista, and 2 were of 
unknown partj^ affiliation. From this it would seem that the Naciona- 
lista victory in the assembly election should not be taken as an assur- 
ance that a permanent majority of the electors will continue to favor 
immediate independence. 

The Assembly has shown a most earnest desire, and its leaders 
have expressed with the utmost emphasis their intention, to labor 
for the material prosperity of the Philippines and to encourage the 
coming of capital and the development of the various plans for the 
improvement of the agriculture and business of the Islands which 
have commended themselves to those in the past responsible for the 
government there. In other words, thus far the Assembly has not 
manifested in any way that obstructive character which those who 
have prophesied its failure expected to see, and who, in this respect, 



48 REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

paradoxical as it may appear, are equally disappointed with those 
anti-imperialists who have hopefully looked to the Assembly as a 
means of embarrassing the present government. 

The organization of the Assembly is one of the great steps in the 
education of the Filipino people for complete self-government. One 
of the assumptions which must be guarded against, but which we 
always encounter, is that the conservative and successful use by the 
people of an instrumentality like that of the national Assembly is 
convincing proof of the people to enjoy greater power and reason 
for an instantaneous granting of that power. This is at variance 
with the theory upon which the power is granted. That theory is 
that the use of such an instrument is valuable chiefly as a means of 
educating those who use it to the knowledge of how it ought to be 
used and to conservatism in its use. The fact that on receiving it 
the people use it conservatively is by no means sufficient proof that 
if it were not subject to ultimate control, guidance, and restraint 
by the agents of the United States, it might jiot be misused. It is 
most encouraging to find it conservatively used and vindicates those 
who urged its adoption, but it is far from demonstrating that this 
conservative use, subject to the limitations upon its power which now 
exist and which have a necessary tendency to make its use conserva- 
tive, would be preserved under conditions in which those limitations 
were entirely removed. The moderate use of such an Assembly for a 
reasonable time may properly form a ground for the greater exten- 
sion of power and the removal of some of the limitations. Progress 
in such a matter to be safe must be gradual. 

I can not refrain from saying at this point that the attitude of the 
national Assembly has been much influenced by the confidence that 
the mem'bers and the Filipino people have in the sense of justice and 
impartiality of Governor- General Smith and the deep sympathy 
which they know he feels in their welfare and in their hopes of con- 
tinued progress. He knows the Filipino people better than any other 
American, and he spares no effort to reconcile their real needs and 
their earnest desires. 

I have reviewed the history of the governmental organization in 
order to show the consistency of the American Government in adher- 
ing to the policy laid down by President McKinley, of gradually ex- 
tending self-government to the Filipinos as they shall show them- 
selves fit. We first, therefore, have the autonomy of the municipality, 
restrained by the disciplinary action of the governor-general, the 
restraint upon the expenditure of its funds by the provincial treas- 
urers, and the audit of its funds by the central authority ; second, the 
partial autonomy of the provincial governments in the election of a 
governor, the more complete autonomy by the constitution of the pro- 
vincial board of two elective members out of three, the restraint upon 



REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR OX THE PHILIPPINES. 49 

the board by the presence of a member of the provincial board ap- 
pointed by the governor, the visitatorial powers of the governor- 
general for disciplinary pttrposes in respect of the provincial officers, 
the restraining influence and assistance of the central constabulary 
force, the modification of complete American central control by the 
introduction of three appointed Filipinos into the Commission, fol- 
lowed after five 3^ears b}^ the inauguration of a completely popular 
elective Assembly to exercise equal legislative power with the Com- 
mission. This progressive policy has justified itself in many ways, 
and especially in the restoration of order to which I have already 
referred. 

SANITATION. 

There is always present in every picture of Philippine progress 
as painted b}^ those who have not carefully investigated the facts, a 
somber background of a baneftil climate making it impossible for 
the American or European to live in health and strength in the 
islands for any length of time. It is true that the islands are in 
the Tropics, and that the variations in temperature are only about 
a third as much in extent as in the Temperate Zone; but, for a tropi- 
cal climate, that of the Philippines is exceptionally comfortable and 
healthful. The monsoons blow six months from southwest across- 
the islands and six months from the northeast, so that they are con- 
stantly windswept. This makes a radical difference between the 
climate of the islands and that of the lowlands of India for instance. 
The last two decades, especially the latter, have taught us much in 
respect to tropical diseases, their causes, their proper treatment, and 
the best method of avoiding them. This was one of the most valu- 
able results of the Spanish war. 

In his address as president of the Philippine Medical Association, 
in March, 1905, Dr. John E. McDilL who came first to the islands as 
a leading army surgeon and who left the Army to carr}' on a most 
successful practice in Manila, said: 

We have come to esteem to the utmost the climate which so effectually 
guards many of you against the too strenuous life and which is almost ideal 
eight months in the year, even in Manila. Our professional experience has 
proven that, excepting some intestinal disorders which we are rapidly prevent- 
ing and curing, and a limited amount of epidemic infectious diseases, there 
is nothing unusual about the kind or amount of disease encountered here, or its 
successful treatment when hospital care is available. The surgeon's work has 
fully demonstrated that ideal wound healing and convalescence after operation 
ig as much the rule here as anywhere in the world. We physicians also know 
that, and appreciate that the dread diseases of childhood so prevalent at home 
are rare here, and that of all the ills particularly among women from real bodily 
ailments to a poor complexion for which the climate is usually blamed, the 
great majority are hereditary or acquired, were brought here by the patient 
and often aggravated by careless and unhygienic living. For old people and 
33483—08 4 



•50 EEPOKT OF SECRETAEY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

children, the climate is an earthly elysium. * =^ * With the improYed and 
constantly improving conditions of living, we believe that almost all will agree 
that by observing the normal and moral life, healthy Americans can live about 
af* long iiere and enjoy as good health and do as much good and hard work, 
iiK.r(- than three-fourths of the year, as we could in the home land. 

The death rate among American soldiers in the Philippines for the 
last year was 8.5 per thousand, and the previous year 8.65. General 
Wood reports that the size of the sick report can not be properly 
■charged to the climate, that, taken as a whole, the reports for the 
years indicate a decided improvement in health conditions, and that 
the men leaving the islands after a regular tour of more than two 
years present a far better appearance than those of the incoming. 

The death rate among American civilians in Manila for the fiscal 
year ending June 30, 1907, was 5.59 per thousand, a reduction from 
the previous year. The death rate among Filipinos this year in 
Manila was 36.9 per thousand and among Spaniards 15.84, both re- 
ductions from the previous year. 

During the decade of our stay in the islands, the conditions of 
life for Americans have steadily bettered. We have become ac- 
quainted with hygienic methods of living, and the death rate of Amer- 
icans of the same social condition in the Philippines is certainly not 
greater than in the cities of the Southern States, and is, as we have 
seen, very much less than that among Filipinos. 

If the United States is to continue its governmental relations with 
t€hQ Philippines for more than a generation, and its business and social 
irelations indefinitely, the fact that Americans can live healthful lives 
in Ae Philippines is important of itself ; but I have cited these sta- 
tistics and this expert opinion to show more than this — I believe that 
it has an important bearing upon another kind of progress possible 
among the Filipino people, and that it opens another important field 
'Of education for the American government to cultivate in the islands. 

Xo one can be m the Philippines long without realizing that as a 
race the Filipinos are small of stature, slight of frame and flesh, and 
with small powers of resistance to epidemic diseases. It has been sup- 
posed that because of their nativity the Filipinos were not subject to 
the malarial, intestinal, and dysenteric troubles that afflict Americans 
and Europeans, and that measures taken to avoid or cure such troubles 
in the case of the foreigner were unnecessary and superfluous with the 
Filipinos. Recent investigations of a systematic kind, carried on by 
keeping comparative statistics of all the official autopsies made in the 
islands, seem to show that the assumption that the Filipinos are im- 
mune from the forms of disease I have mentioned is without founda- 
tion. The autopsies of 100 cases showed in a great majority the germs 
of malaria, of amoebic dysentery, and that microbe of the so-called 
^* lazy " disease of Porto Eico known as the "hookworm." It is true 



EEPORT OF SECRETAKY OF WAE ON THE PHILIPPINES. 51 

that the diseases were not active or acute, but their presence in the 
system of course weakened the constitution of the subject and could 
easily explain his anaemic condition, his smallness of stature, and 
small powers of resistance. Malaria, of course, is produced or at least 
transmitted by the mosquito, while amoebic dysentery and the " lazy " 
disease are water-borne and proceed directly from the miserable 
sources of water supply in most Filipino towns. Proper precautions 
can avoid all these; or at least can greatly reduce the number of 
victims. 

In Manila, 60 per cent of all infants bom die during the first year 
of their lives, and there is no reason to believe that infant mortality 
in other parts of the islands is less. This frightful percentage is 
brought about by ignorance and neglect of the mothers in feeding 
their babies. There are very few if any milch cows in the islands, and 
the little ones are fed with all sorts of impossible things. They die 
generally of a lack of nourishment. There is no reason why, if the 
mothers were correctly taught and proper infant food were brought 
within the reach of the poor, this awful rate of infant mortality 
might not be reduced. Xot only is there an actual loss of life which 
might be avoided, but the babies which live through such treatment 
and nourishment are not apt to make strong men and women, but are 
likely to become victims of anaemia and other diseases mentioned as 
shown in the autojDsies I have referred to. 

I do not think it is unjust to the Spanish regime in the Philippines 
to say that very little if any attention was paid to sanitation accord- 
ing to modern methods. In the city of Manila and in the other large 
towns of the islands the American military medical authorities, who 
were the first to assume responsibility for the health of the islands, 
found the same utter disregard of the proper rules for the dis- 
position of house sewage that was found in Habana. Thousands, yes, 
tens of thousands, of Filipinos were carried off year after year by a 
peculiarly virulent type of smallpox. 

In Manila, in Cebu, and in Nueva Caceres, respectively, were leper 
hospitals, but in each the management was inefficient and the care of 
the inmates poor. More than this, no supervision was exercised to 
isolate lepers not in hospitals. Some times the poor creatures were 
driven out of villages by popular riots and herded together with no 
proper food and no shelter. The contact of lepers with the people 
of course only increased the number of cases of the dread disease. 

In 1885 or 1886 the islands were visited by an epidemic of cholera 
and the prostration of the people of Manila and the Philippines, due 
to the rapid spread of the scourge, beggared description. In Manila 
the deaths were 1,000 or more a day from that cause alone for a num- 
ber of weeks. The trade proximity of Manila, Iloilo, and Cebu, to 
China, India, Java, Burma, and the Straits Settlements, makes the 



52 REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

danger of transmitting tropical and other infectious diseases very 
much greater. 

Quarantine in Spanish times was lax. The American Army med- 
ical authorities took hold of the matter of sanitation in their usual 
vigorous way and made much progress in the matter of quarantine 
and in correcting the glaringly insanitary conditions in Manila. But 
it remained for the civil government to effect a thorough organization 
of a health department which could do permanent good. 

The introduction of sanitary methods by law among the people 
has given rise to more dissatisfaction and greater criticism of the 
government than any other one cause. The truth is that the people 
have to be educated in the effectiveness of such methods before they 
can become reconciled to them, and the work of the health depart- 
ment since the beginning of the civil government in 1901 ha3 been 
obstructed, first, by the inertia and indifference of the people in re- 
spect to the matter, and second, by their active resistance to affirma- 
tive restraints upon them necessary to prevent disease. 

The fight against smallpox has been so successful that in the past 
year not a single death from it occurred in Manila, and in the prov- 
inces of Cavite, Batangas, Cebu, Rizal, Bataan, La Laguna and La 
Union, where, heretofore there have been approximately 6,000 deaths 
per year not one was reported. In the few places in other provinces 
where smallpox appeared it made little headway. More than 2,000,- 
000 vaccinations against smallpox were performed last year, and 
vaccination is being carried on so that it will reach every inhabitant 
of the islands. 

In 1902 Asiatic cholera appeared. The loss the first year by reason 
of the methods introduced was much less than it had been fifteen or 
sixteen years before, but great difficulty was encountered in putting 
into force the health regulations and a futile attempt was made to 
establish quarantine between localities in the islands. Since that time 
a better system of isolation and stamping out the disease in the local- 
ity where it appeared has been followed, and it is gratifying to note 
that although the dread disease appeared each year, it was finally 
brought to an end on November 27, 1906, and the authorities now feel 
that the people have been so thoroughly roused to the best methods 
of treating the disease that any local reappearance of it can be readily 
suppressed. 

In 1902 or 1903 the bubonic plague appeared in the islands. This 
has been suppressed by the isolation of all persons suffering from the 
disease and the destruction of plague-infected rats so that during 
the last year there were no cases of bubonic plague whatever. 

When the Americans first began government in the Philippines it 
was reported that leprosy was so widely extended in the islands that 
there were probably from 25,000 to 50,000 lepers to be cared for. 



KEPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 53 

After many unsuccessful efforts a leper colony has finally been estab- 
lished at Culion, a healthful and attractive island between Panay 
and Palawan, to which all the lepers of the islands are' now being 
gradually removed. The number probably does not exceed 3,000. 
The course pursued is to take each province separately and by 
thorough investigation of the reported cases of lepers, determine 
those of true leprosy and to remove them thence to the colony of 
Culion. The experiment at first was a doubtful one because of the 
objection of the lepers to being taken so far away from their homes, 
and some of the friends of lepers made vigorous objections to this 
course. After the removal of the first 500, however, and when they 
found how comfortable and agreeable life at Culion was, the objec- 
tions ceased. Leprosy as a disease usually does not directly kill its 
victims, but it so weakens the powers of their resistance that the rate 
of mortality from other causes among lepers is very high. The sys- 
tem of isolation and withdrawing lepers from the thickly populated 
communities has been at once justified by the reduction in the number 
of new case. The number of known lepers in the archipelago on Sep- 
tember 1, 1905, was 3,580 ; on June 30, 1907, it was 2,826, a decrease of 
654, due to the death of the known lepers without any spread of the 
disease as had been the case in previous years and under different con- 
ditions. The policy of removal of lepers is one which can only be 
carried out gradually and has been applied only to a part of the 
provinces, but it will probably be completed in three or four years 
when all the lejDers will be removed to Culion and the effect of this 
isolation will certainly be to reduce the infection of healthful persons 
with the awful disease to a minimum. 

The fruitful source of the spread of amoebic dysentery is the drink- 
ing of impure water. The water supply of Manila is drawn from 
the Mariquina Eiver after it has passed through three or four thickly 
populated towns and an inmiense amount of trouble and labor has 
been expended in trying to preserve the river from contamination by 
these towns. Military forces have been picketed along the banks and 
the most stringent regulations have been enforced against the inhabit- 
ants. Much has been accomplished in this matter, but still the water 
is dangerous to drink unless boiled and filtered. With a view to the 
removal of this difficulty, new waterworks are in the process of build- 
ing at a cost to the city of Manila of about two millions of dollars. 
The water is to be drawn from a point very much farther up the Mari- 
quina Eiver, at a distance of about 25 miles from Manila, and is to be 
accumulated in a reservoir by damming the river at a point where 
nature apparently intended a dam to be put. Pure mountain water 
will thus be obtained which is to be carried to the city of Manila 
simply by the power of gravity. The new improvement is 80 per 
cent done and water will flow into the city probably by Jul}^ of 1 903. 



5i REPOBT OF SECRETAKY OF WAP. ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

In addition to this a new sewer system has been projected and is 
under construction in the city of Manila and 18 miles of the deep 
and main trunk sewers have been laid in the city. The mileage of the 
remainder of the sewers is very much greater, but the engineer esti- 
mates that about half of the work has been done. The project con- 
templates the establishment of reservoirs and the pumping of sewage 
out into the bay at such a distance as to prevent its retaining any 
noxious character. The difficulty of sewering Manila can be under- 
stood when it is known that the level of the ground in the city is 
only a few feet above high water mark. With the completion of the 
water and sewer systems and the canalization of the esteros or canals, 
with which the city is threaded, a work which is projected and which 
will cost about $400,000, there is no doubt that Manila will become 
as healthful a tropical city as there is in the world. 

The very high death rate in the city is due to the frightful mortal- 
ity among the native infants under 1 year of age already alluded to. 
The absence of pure milk for babes in the Philippines accounts for 
a good deal of this mortality, and a charitable organization has been 
established for the circulation at reasonable cost of milk for infants 
among both the poor and rich classes. The destruction of all the 
horned cattle by rinderpest has reduced the supply of milk and made 
it expensive. This adds greatly to the difficulty presented. The lack 
of nourishment makes the child an easy victim to any disease, and 
until Filipino mothers are taught properly to bring up their chil- 
dren, we may expect this infant mortality to continue, but it is 
subject to cure, and the methods adopted by the government and the 
charitable organizations, including the churches, whose interest is 
aroused, may be depended on to bring about a reform in this matter. 

It is a fact that throughout the islands too, a great deal of the 
mortality, among both children and adults, is due to water-borne 
diseases. The supply of water in each village is generally contami- 
nated and noxious. The government has taken steps to induce every 
town to sink artesian wells for the purpose of giving its inhabitants 
pure water. Several well-boring machines have been purchased by 
the government and have been offered to the towns for use by them 
on condition of their supplying the fuel and the labor necessary. 
Wherever artesian wells have been sunk and a good supply of water 
found, the death rate in the town has been reduced 50 per cent. With 
a knowledge of the effectiveness of this remedy, it is certain that 
the government will continue to press upon the towns the necessity 
of the comparatively small expenditure necessary to secure proper 
water, for it appears that in most towns in the islands artesian water 
is available. 

There is no reason why the whole Filipino race may not be made 
stronger and better by the pursuit of proper sanitary methods with 



REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 55> 

respect to the ordinary functions of life. The spread of education, 
the knowledge of cause and effect in this matter, together with the 
sympathetic assistance and regulation of the government are all that 
is needed to rid the Filipino of the obstructions to bodily growth and 
strength which injurious microbes and bacteria living in the body 
now create. The bureau of health and the bureau of science, which: 
has actively aided the bureau of health in the investigations made,, 
have now commended themselves to the Filipino people in such a way 
that there is every reason to hope that the foundation for better health 
in the islands has been permanently laid. 

The government has this year established and begun a Government 
Medical School, the faculty of which is made up partly of Filipino& 
and partly of Americans, and the most modern methods of instruction 
are projected. A fine laboratory, already erected near the ]3lace where 
the medical school building is to be constructed and a general govern- 
ment hospital in the immediate neighborhood will furnish a nucleus 
for the study of tropical diseases and the proper methods of sanita- 
tion. The graduates of this college as the}^ grow in number and 
spread all over the islands into regions most of which have never 
known a physician at all will greatly contribute to the physical change 
and development for the better of the Filipino. 

The health department has been exceedingly expensive, and the 
amount taken from the treasury each year has been subject to much 
criticism, but the results are so gratifying that even the most cap- 
tious seems now willing to admit that the expenditure was wise^ 
prudent, and justified. A most thorough quarantine has been estab- 
lished and maintained under the auspices of the United States Pub- 
lic Health and Marine-Hosj^ital Service in the ports of entry in the 
islands. 

As is well understood now the mosquito is the means of communica- 
ting malaria and yelloAv fever and other diseases. It is supposed that 
the Stegomyia mosquito, which carries the yellow fever, is found in 
the Philippines, although no case of the fever has ever occurred in the 
Islands. The importance of the mosquito in the Philippines is con- 
fined to malaria at present. Varieties of the insect carrying most 
malignant malaria are found to generate in the salt-water marshes, 
though ordinarily it has been supposed that the Anopheles mosquito 
conveying malaria generated only in fresh water. The wet season 
seems to interfere with the operations of the mosquito by throwing 
so much water into the streams as to prevent the stagnation necessary 
to their successful propagation. A singular instance of this is found 
in the old walled city of Manila. The old walled city has a sewer 
system for storm or surface-water drainage. During the wet season 
there is practically no malaria in the walled city, but during the dry 
season there is a great deal. It has been found that in the dry 



56 REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR 0^^ THE PHILIPPINES. 

season in the absence of rainy weather the sewers contain stagnant 
pools in which the Anopheles mosquito is generated in great numbers 
and thus carries on his business of conveying malaria from one inhab- 
itant of the walled city to another, whereas in the rainy season the 
sewers are flushed all the time and there is no opportunity to the mos- 
quito to propagate. Measures have now been taken to flush the sewers 
of the walled city in the dry season and rid the inhabitants of this 
pest until the new sewer system shall be put in operation, when the 
evil can be entirely eradicated. 

BENGUET. A HEALTH RESORT. 

In all the tropical countries in which civilized government has been 
established and progress made toward the betterment of conditions 
of human life, places have been found and settlements effected in 
high altitudes where the conditions approximate in atmosphere and 
climate those of the Temperate Zone. This is true in India, in Cey- 
lon, in Java, and wherever there are neighboring mountains which 
offer the opportunity. 

The Philippines are fortunate in having a territory in Luzon in 
the mountains of an altitude ranging from 4,500 to 7,000 feet, a 
rolling country filled with groves of pine trees and grass, in which 
the temperature rarely goes below 40° and never goes above 80° in 
the shade. The province containing most of this territory is called 
'' Benguet." Similar climate is found in the adjoining provinces of 
Lepanto and Bontoc. The railway from Manila to Dagupan has 
now been extended to what is called " Camp No. 1, " a distance of 22 
miles from Baguio, the chief town in Benguet, where is the govern- 
ment sanitarium and other places of resort and cure. At the cost of 
about two millions of dollars, the government has constructed a fine 
road up the gorge of the Bued River to a height of 5,000 feet. The 
work would probably never have been entered upon, had it been 
supposed that it would be so costly, but now that it is done, and well 
done, the advantages accruing and soon to accrue, justify the expendi- 
ture. 

The representatives of all the churches in the islands have taken lots 
and are putting up buildings, hospitals of various kinds are to be 
erected, there is a sanitarium, the Commission holds part of its ses- 
sions there, and it is hoped that the assembly will see fit to do the 
same thing. A great many Filipinos recuperate by going to Japan 
or Europe, but here within easy distance of Manila will be offered an 
opportunity where the same kind of revitalizing atmosphere may be 
found as in a temperate climate. The Filipinos were at first dis- 
posed to criticise the expenditure on the ground that the road 
was built solely for the few American officials who expected to 
live there a large part of their time. The lots were offered at 
public auction and a great many were purchased by Filipinos, and 



REPOKT or SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PEIILIPPTNES. 



57 



now it is o-eiieraliy understood that the value of such a place 
in the Philippine Islands has impressed itself upon the Filipino 
public at large. The present necessity is the construction of a 
railroad from Camp No. 1 directly into Baguio and steps have been 
taken to bring this about. A large military reservation has been set 
aside which it is hoped may be made into a brigade post for the re- 
cuperation of our soldiers while in the Philippines. The railroad is 
likely to have the patronage of those who spend part of their time 
at Baguio, going and coming from Manila and other parts of the 
islands, and also Avith the construction of a good hotel in Manila and 
another one at Baguio there is not the slightest reason to doubt that 
a large tourist patronage will be invited for both places. Mean- 
time the health-giving influence of the climate at Baguio can not 
but exercise a good effect upon the young Filipinos who may be sent 
there to be educated and upon those Filipinos who have been subject 
to tropical diseases and have the time and means for visiting this 
mountain resort. With the construction of a railroad, transportation 
to Baguio may be made exceedingly reasonable and sanitariums built 
which will furnish for very moderate cost a healthful regimen and 
diet. Benguet is really a part of the system of government sanita- 
tion and may properly be mentioned in connection with it here. 

Comparative mortaUty from January 1, 1901, to September 30, 1907. 





1901. 


1902. 


1903. 


1904. 


Month. 


Number 

of 
deaths. 


.\nnual 
death rate 
per 1,000. 


Number 

of 
deaths. 


Annual 
death rate 
per 1,000. 


Number 

of 
deaths. 


Annual 
death rate 
per 1,000. 


Number 

of 
deaths. 


Annual 
death rate 
per 1,000. 


January 

February ... 

March 

April 

May 


753 
689 
885 
886 
903 
621 
~ 608 
702 
767 
855 
848 
858 


«36.25 
a 36. 72 
a 42. 66 
a 44. 07 
" 43. 47 
a ,30. 89 
o 29. 27 
a 33. 79 
«38.15 
«41.16 
a 42. 18 
a 41. 30 


760 

706 

770 

1,327 

1,688 

1,418 

2, 223 

1,712 

1,182 

927 

1,035 

753 


a 36. 58 
a 37. 63 
a 37. 06 

. a 66. 01 
a 81. 26 
a 70. 54 

a 107. 02 
a 82. 42 
a 56. 31 
a 44. 62 
n 51. 48 
a 36. 25 


602 
511 
539 
549 
770 
592 
620 
862 
1,228 
1,217 
974 
894 


a 28. 98 
a 27. 23 
a 25. 94 
a 27. 31 
« 37. 06 
a 29. 45 
6 33. 21 
6 46.17 
6 67. 97 
6 65.19 
6 63. 91 
6 47. 89 


™ 

709 

751 

748 

766 

800 

866 

1,032 

1,064 

1,018 

957 

794 


6 42. 64 
6 40.59 
6 40.23 
6 41.40 
6 41.03 


June 

July 

August 

September . . 

October 

November .. 
December... 


6 44.28 
6 46.39 
6 55.28 
6 58.89 
6 54.53 
6 52.97 
6 42.53 




Month . 




1 


905. 


1 


906. 


1907. 




Number 

of 
deaths. 


Annual 
death rate 
per 1,000. 


Number 

of 
deaths. 


Annual 
death rate 
per 1,000. 


Number 

of 
deaths. 


Annual 
death rate 
per 1,000. 




685 
608 
563 
530 
526 
593 
747 
841 
1,013 
850 
944 
841 


6 36.69 
636.05 
630.15 
6 29.32 
628.16 
632.81 
640.00 
645.03 
656.06 
645.51 
652.24 
6 45.03 


737 
595 
600 
555 
600 
693 
1,451 
1, 182 
835 
684 
653 
597 


6 39. 47 
6 35.28 
6 32. 13 
6 30.27 
6 32. 13 
6 36.72 
6 77. 72 
6 63.31 
6 46.22 
6 36.64 
6 36.14 
6 31.98 


632 
473 
464 
416 
462 
402 
515 
653 
768 


33.31 


February 


c 27. 59 




c- 24. 45 


April . . 


c 22. 65 


May 


f 24. 35 


June 


c 21. 89 


July 


c 27. 14 




c 34. 41 


September . 


C41.82 


October 










December 













a Death rate computed on population of 244,732 (health department's census). 
6 Death rate computed on population of 219,941 (official census, 1903). 
c Death rate computed on population of 223,542 (health census, 1907). 



58 



REPOET OF SECEETAEY OF WAE OX THE PHILIPPINES. 



MoiiaVdij compared tcith same period of precious years. 



First quarter. 



Second quarter. j Third quarter. 



Number Annual Number ! Annual Number 

of I death rate i of | death rate of 
deaths, per 1.000. • deaths. | per 1.000. deaths. 



1901 1 2,327 42.93 

1902 2,236 41.25 

1903 ' 1.652 30.48 

1904 i 2,256 41.16 

1905 i 1.856 34.24 

1906 ' 1,932 35.64 

1907 1.569 2S.48 



2,410 
4,433 
1,911 

2,314 
1.649 
1,848 
1. 280 



43.97 
80.89 
34.87 
42.22 
30.09 
33.72 
22.98 



2,077 
5,067 
2.710 
2.962 
2.601 
3,468 
1,936 



Annual Number 
death rate of 
per 1,000. deaths. 



Fourth quarter. 



47.49 
91.46 
48.91 
53. 46 
46.94 
62.59 
34.38 



Annual 
death rate 
per 1,000. 



2,561 
2,715 
3,085 

2,769 I 
2.635 
1.934 I 



46. 22 
29.00 
55. 68 
49.98 
47.56 
34.90 



MATERIAL PROGRESS AND BUSINESS CONDITIONS. 



I come now to material conditions in the islands and the progress 
that has been made in respect to them. While there is reason to hope 
that the mining industry may be very mnch improved and developed, 
the future of the islands is almost Tvholly involved in the development 
of its agricultural resources, and the business of the islands must 
necessarily depend on the question of how much its inhabitants can 
get out of the ground. In bringing about the reforms and making 
the progress which I have been detailing, the government has had to 
meet disadvantageous conditions in respect to agriculture that can 
hardly be exaggerated. 

The chief products of the islands are abaca, or Manila hemp as it 
is generally called, the fiber of a fruitless variety of banana plant; 
cocoanuts, generall}^ in the form of the dried cocoanut meat called 
" copra;" sugar, exported in a form having the lowest degree of po- 
larization known in commerce, and tobacco exported in the leaf and 
also in cigars and cigarettes. There are other exports of course, but 
these form 'the bulk of the merchantable products of the islands. In 
addition to these, and in excess of most of them except hemp, is the 
production of rice which constitutes the staple food of the inhabit- 
ants. Some 3^ears before the Americans came to the islands the pro- 
duction of ric^had diminished in extent because the hemp fiber grew 
so much in demand that it was found to be more profitable to raise 
hemp and buy the rice from abroad. In the first few jesus of the 
American occupation, however, during the insurrection and the contin- 
uance of the guerrilla warfare, and finally the prevalence of ladron- 
ism, many of the rice fields lay idle and the importation of rice 
reached the enormous figure of twelve millions of dollars gold, or 
about four-tenths of the total imports. With the restoration of better 
conditions, the production in rice has increased so that the amount 
of rice now imported is only about $3,500,000 in gold, and the differ- 
ence between the two importations doubtless measures the increased 
native production of the cereal. 



KEPORT OF SECKETARY OF \YAIi ON THE PHILIPPINES. 



59 



During the six years of American occupancy undei* the civil gov- 
ernment agriculture has been subject to the violent destruc- 
tion which is more or less characteristic of all tropical countries. 
The typhoons have damaged the cocoanut trees, they have at times 
destroyed or very much affected the hemp production, and drought 
has injured the rice as well as the cocoanuts. The character of the 
tobacco leaf has deteriorated much because of a lack of care in its 
cultivation due to the loose and careless habits of agriculture caused 
by war and ladronism, and locusts have at times cleared the fields of 
other crops without leaving anything for the food of the cultivators. 

The great disaster to the islands,^ however, has been the rinderpest, 
which carried away in two or three years 75 or 80 per cent of all 
draft cattle in the islands. This was a blow under which the agricul- 
ture of the islands has been struggling for now four or five years. At- 
tempts were made, under the generous legislation of Congress ap- 
propriating three millions of dollars to remedy the loss if possible, to 
bring in cattle from other countries, but it was found that the cattle 
brought in not being acclimated died, most of them before they could 
be transferred to the farm, and then too they only added to the diffi- 
culty of the situation by bringing new diseases into the Philippines. 
It has been found that nothing can restore former conditions except 
the natural breeding of the survivors, and in this way it will certainly 
take five or six years more to restore matters to their normal condi- 
tion. Meantime, of course, other means are sought and encouraged 
for transportation and for plowing. The difficulty in the use of 
horses is that an Indian disease called the " surra," which it has been 
impossible to cure, has carried off 50 per cent of the horses of the 
islands. Considering these difficulties, it seems to me wonderful that 
the exports from the islands have so far exceeded the exports in 
Spanish times and have been so well maintained that last year there 
was more exported from the islands than ever before in the history of 
the Philippines, as will be seen from the following table: 



Value of PJulippine exj)orts, 1903-1907 of American occupation. 



Fiscal year. 


Hemp. 


Sugar. 


Tobacco 
and manu- 
factures. 


Copra. 


All other. 


Total. 


1903 

1904 


Dollars. 

21,701,575 

21,794,960 

22, 146, 241 

19,446,769 

21,085,081 


Dollars. 

3, 955, 568 

2,668,507 

4,977,026 

4,863,865 

3,934,460 


Dollars. 

1,882,018 

2,013,287 

1. 999. 193 
2,389,890 

3. 129. 194 


Dollars. 

4,473,029 

2,527,019 

2,095,355 

4, 043, 115 

4,053,193 


Dollars. 

1, 107, 709 

1,246,854 

1,134,800 

1,173,495 

1,511,429 


Dollars. 
33, 119, 899 
30, 250, 627 
32 352,615 


1905 


1906 


31,917,134 


1907 1 


33,713 357 






Average annual 


21, 234, 925 


4,079,885^ 


2,282, 716 


3, 438, 342 


1,234,857 


32,270,726 



Note.— Total exports do not include gold and silve coin. 



i 



60 



REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 



The largest export showing in Spanish times, during years for 
which there are official statistics, was as follows : 

Value of Philippine exports in Spanish times, calendar years 1885-1894. 



Calendar j-ear. 


Hemp. 


Sugar. 


Tobacco 
and manu- 
factures. 


Copra.i! 


Total, in- 
cluding all 
other arti- 
cles. 


1885 . . 


Dollars. 
5, 509, 757 
4. 840, 058 
8, 161, 550 
8,099,422 

10, 402, 614 


Dollars. 
8, 669, 522 
7, 019, 978 
6, 156, 709 
6,271,030 
9, 101, 024 


Dollars. 
2, 297, 358 
2, 010, 093 
1, 559, 070 
2,449,181 
2,255,494 


Dollars. 


Dollar's. 
20,561,434 
20,113,847 
19,447,997 
19, 404, 434 


1886 


5,781 

36, 809 

131,347 

209. 820 


1887 


1888 


1889 


25,671,322 




Average annual 


7,302,680 


7, 443, 653 


2,114,240 


76,752 


21,037,807 




1890 


6, 925, 564 
10,323,913 

6, 886, 526 

7, 697, 164 
7,243,842 


7, 265, 030 
5, 696, 746 
7, 768, 595 
10, 368, 883 
5, 476, 617 


2, 469, 033 
2, 150, 306 
2, 535, 740 
2,433,304 
1, 576, 175 


85, 764 


21,547,541 
20,878,359 
19,163,950 
22 183 223 


1891 


1892 


743, 918 

414, 652 

1, 172, 191 


1893 


1894 


16,541,842 




Average annual 


7,815,402 


7,315,174 


2,232,912 


483, 305 


20,062,983 





a Value of cocoanuts included. 

Note.— Figures are taken from "Estadistica general del comercio exterior de las Islas Filipinas," 
issued by the Spanish Government. 
Total exports include gold and silver coin. 

The chief export in value and quantity from the Philippines is 
Manila hemp, it amounting to between 60 and 65 per cent of the total 
exports. Its value has increased very rapidly of late and the result 
has been that much inferior hemp has been exported, because it could 
be produced more cheaply and in greater quantity. That which has 
made the hemp expensive and has reduced the export of it — for large 
quantities of it rot in the field still — is the lack of transportation and 
the heavy expense of the labor involved in pulling the fiber and free- 
ing it from the pulp of the stem. Several machines have been in- 
vented to do this mechanically and it seems likely now that two 
have been invented which may do the work, although they have not 
been sufficiently tested to make this certain. Should a light, portable, 
and durable machine be invented which would accomplish this, it will 
revolutionize the exportation of hemp and will probably have a ten- 
dency to reduce its cost, but greatly to increase its use and to develop 
the export business of the Philippine Islands most rapidly. 



SUGAR AND TOBACCO REDUCTION OF TARIFF. 

There is a good deal of land available for sugar in the Philippines, 
but there is very little of it as good as that in Cuba, and the amount 
of capital involved in developing it is so great that I think the pos- 
sibility of the extension of the sugar production is quite remote. The 
moment it expands, the price of labor which has already increased 50 to 
75 per cent will have another increase. All that can really be expected 



REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WJlR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 61 

is that the sugar industry — and this is also true of the tobacco indus- 
try — shall be restored to their former prosperity in the earlier Span- 
ish times when the highest export of sugar reached 265,000 tons to all 
the world. 

The tobacco industry needs a careful cultivation which, under 
present conditions, it is very difficult to secure. The carelessness with 
which the plant is grown and the defective character of the leaves is 
such as to make the manufacturers of cigars and tobacco in Manila 
despair of using the Philippine product without the addition of the 
wrappers either from Sumatra or the United States. 

All that a friend of the Philippines can hope for is that the sugar 
and tobacco industries shall regain their former reasonably prosper- 
ous conditions. The development of the islands must be in another 
direction. The question of labor and capital both must always seri- 
ously hamper the growth of sugar production. Nor would I regard 
it as a beneficial result for the Philippine Islands to have the fields 
©f those islands turned exclusively to the growth of sugar. The social 
conditions that this would bring about would not promise well for the 
political and industrial development of the people, because the cane 
sugar industry makes a society in which there are wealthy landowners 
holding very large estates with most valuable and expensive plants 
and a large population of unskilled labor, with no small farming 
or middle class tending to build up a conservative, self-respecting 
community from bottom to top. But, while I have this view in 
respect to the matter, I am still strongly of the opinion that jus- 
tice requires that the United States should open her sugar and 
tobacco markets to the Philippines. I am very confident that such 
a course would not injure, by way of competition, either the sugar or 
the tobacco industries of the United States, but that it would merely 
substitute Philippine sugar and tobacco for a comparatively small 
part of the sugar and tobacco that now comes in after paying 
duty. Their free admission into this country would not affect the 
prices of sugar and tobacco in the United States as long as any sub- 
stantial amount of those commodities must be imported with the full 
duty paid in order to supply the markets of the United States. 

So confident am I that the development, which the sugar and 
tobacco interests of the United States fear in the Philippines from 
an admission of those products free to the United States, will not 
ensue to the injury of those interests that I would not object to a lim- 
itation on the amount of sugar and tobacco in its various forms, man- 
ufactured and unmanufactured, which may be admitted to the United 
States from the Philippines, the limitation being such a reasonable 
amount as would admittedly not aff'ect the price of either commodity 
in the United States or lead to a great exploitation of the sugar and 



62 REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

tobacco interests in the islands. The free admission of sugar and 
tobacco up to the amount of the proposed limitation, for the purpose 
of restoring the former prosperity in these two products to the islands, 
is very important. There are two or three provinces, notably Occi- 
dental !N'egros and the island of Panay, the prosperity of which is 
bound up in good markets for sugar, and this is true also of some parts 
of Laguna, Cavite, Bulacan, and Pampanga, where sugar was raised 
in the old days with success and profit. In respect to tobacco, the 
need is not so pressing because the territory in which marketable 
tobacco culture prevails is by no means so great. Still it does affect 
three provinces, Cagayan, Isabela, and La Union. 

FODDER. 

The agricultural bureau of the government has been devoting a 
great deal of effort and time and money to experimenting in agri- 
culture. They have made many failures and have not yet succeeded 
certainly in sowing a grass which will properly cure and may be used 
for hay. It is hoped that in certain of the higher altitudes alfalfa, 
and especially clover, may be raised successfully; and if so the very 
high price which has now to be paid for fodder imported from 
America may be avoided. This is a question which seriously affects 
the cost of the Army in the Philippines. 

NEW PLANTS. 

Through the agricultural bureau a new industry has been de- 
veloped, that of raising maguey, a plant, the fiber of which is much 
less valuable than that of Manila hemp, but which has a good market 
whenever it is produced in quantities. The rapidity with which a 
great deal of land in the Philippines that heretofore has not been 
capable of profitable use is now taken up with the planting of maguey 
is most encouraging. The plants are being distributed by the agri- 
cultural bureau in the islands. 

THE FINANCIAL CONDITION OF THE GO^TERNMENT. 

The financial condition of the government is as good to-day as 
it ever has been. The following table shows what it is^ and the sur- 
plus on hand for emergencies is satisfactory : 



REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR OX THE PHILIPPINES. 



63 



General account balance sheet of the government of the Philippine Islands for the fiscal 

\iear ended June 20, 1907. 



Debit. 



Surplus and deficiency account: 

Balance from previous years | i 

Excess reventie? over expenditures i | 

Excess resources over liabilities $7, 500, 782. 29 I . 

Carried from suspense account \ ' 



Total 



500, 782. 29 



Credit. 



64, 439, 974. 02 
2, 741, 606. 41 

""'3i9,'26i.'86 

7, 500, 782. 29 



Insular revenues and expenditures: i 

Customs revenues i 

Internal revenue I 

Miscellaneous revenues j 

Insular expenditures ; 6, 968, 724. 86 

Payments to provinces ! .1, 438, 440. 40 

Lo.^ses under section 41, act 1402 ^ 346.20 

Allowances under section 42, act 1402 \ " .^Ol. 38 

Inter-bureau transactions i 



7,990,376.57 

2, 684, 579. 24 

389. 448. 25 



85, 223. 19 



Total 

Excess revenues over expenditures 



8.408,012.84 ' 11,149,619.25 
2,741,606.41 ' 

11,149,619.25 ' 11,149,619.25 



25,033,490.93 
1,006,753.13 



481, 137. 55 
'66i,'2.55."3i' 



), 670. 548. 06 
45, 646. 13 



Resources and liabilities: 

The insular treasurer's cash balance 

Gold-standard fund 

Surplus on customs auction sales 

Invalid money ord ers 

Outstanding liabilities 

Loans to provinces 

Refundable export duties 

City of Manila 

Outstanding warrants 

Friar lands funds 

Moro Province 

Depositary fund | 

Silver certificate redemption fund : : 

Refundable internal revenues ! , 

Public works and permanent improvement fund \ 2, 198, 249. 70 , . 

Congressional relief fund I ! 

Sewer and waterworks construction fund I ! 

Insular treasurer's liability on unissued silver certificates 9, 702, 500. 00 ' . 

Unissued silver certificates 1 

Miscellaneous special funds j 

Pro\T[ncial governments I 

Philippine money-order account - 

United States money-order account 

Bonded indebtedness 

Outstanding postal drafts , ' 

Friar land bond sinking fund | 106, 216. 92 . . 

Sewer and waterworks construction bond sinking fund 

Rizal monument fund ' 

Baguio town-site improvement fund , I 

Collecting and disbursing officers i 2, 384, 404. 42 . 



466.84 
2,047.14 
5, 229. 40 



418,698.89 



139,136.45 



3, 956, 263. 00 

10, 770, 3.54. 00 

331,970.30 

'"'"236," 934." 79 
1,855,081.84 

"'9,' 702,' 566.' 66 

387,095.17 

1,132,743.62 

182, 576. 54 

128,201.86 

14, 500, 000. 00 

2, 283. 29 

39,' 898." 34 

1, 413. 20 
1, 525. 19 



Total ! 51,290,202.15 

Excess resources over liabilities j 



43,789,419.86 
7. 500, 782. 29 



Total ' 51, 290, 202. 1-= 



51,290.202.15 



Suspense account: 

Transfer of funds 

General account deposits 

Accountable warrants 

Carried to surplus and deficiency account 



7, 674. 49 
195, 263. 24 
116, 264. 13 



319,201.86 



Total 



319, 201. 86 



319.201.86 



Treasury account: 

Balance from previous fiscal years 

Receipts at the treasury 

Withdrawals from the treasury 

Available for appropriation 

Appropriations undrawn 

Available for refundment or redemption 

Total 



22, 461, 858. 40 
112,780,022.27 



110, 347, 526. 19 
5, 218, 817. 54 
4, 948, 919. 94 
14,726,617.00 



135, 241, 880. 67 136, 241, 880. 67 



64 



REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR OX THE PHILIPPINES. 



The following statement of revenues and expenditures of the Philip- 
pine government, exclusive of all items of a refundable character, 
covers the period from the date of American occupation, August 18, 
1898, to June 30, 1907. 

Revejiues. 



Fiscal vear ended .June 30 — 



In.sular. 



1899 1 13, 558, 682. 83 

1900 6, 899. 340. 53 

1901 i 10, 753; 459. 95 

1902 '' 9,371,283.11 

1903 ' 10, 757, 455. 63 

1904 ': 10, 249, 263. 98 

1905 i 11, 549, 495. 37 

1906 1 11,468,067.16 

1907 ' ! 11, 149, 619. 25 



Provincial. 



City 
of Manila. 



Total. 



*2, 008, 480. 88 
2, 527, 252. 93 

3. 295, 839. 47 
3.107,912.91 

4, 509, 572. 02 
4, 604, 528. 31 



$1,199,593.21 
1, 541, 575. 85 
1,931,129.97 
1,441,165.82 
1.995.289.85 
1.691.341.93 



558, 682. 83 
899,340.53 
753,459.95 
579, 357. 20 
826, 284. 41 
476, 233. 42 
098, 574. 10 
972, 929. 03 
445, 489. 49 



Total. 



85,756.667.81 > 20,053,586.52 



,800,096.63 115,610,350.96 



Expenditures 



1899 


$2, 376, 327. 12 

4,758,793.66 

6,451,528.37 

8,189,404.59 

10,249,533.40 

11,122,562.38 i 

12,248,857.33 

10,146,779.12 ; 

8,408,012.84 


1 
1 


i 


$2 376 327 12 


1900 


4 758 793 66 


1901 


1 


[ 


6 451 528.37 


1902 


?i.633,i58.22 i 
1,981.261.22 1 
2. 339. 826. 10 
1.474,320.43 
4,335,091.32 
4,736,038.20 


$622. 294. 8i ! 
1.177.611.67 
1; 578! 303. 50 
2.574,102.78 : 
2,492.392.23 : 
1,560.801.40 


10,444,857.62 
13,408,406.29 
15,040,691.98 
16 297,280 54 


1903 . 


1904 


1905 . ... 


1906 


16. 974, 262. 67 
14 704 852 44 


1907 . . 






Total 


73,951,798.81 


16,499,695.49 1 


10,005,506.39 | 


100, 457, 000. 69 



The bonded indebtedness is as follows : 



Title of bonds. 



Land purchase bonds 

Philippine public improve- 
ment bonds: 

First issue 

Second issue 

Manila sewer and water 
supply bonds: 
First issue 

Second issue 

Total 



Authorized by Congress. 



Amount 
of issue. 



Date issued. 



Redeem- 
able. 



Act of July 1, 1902 , 



$7,000,000 I Jan. 11,1904 



1914 



Act of Feb. G, 1905 2. 500, 000 1 Mar. 1 . 1905 i 1915 

do I 1, 000, 000 Feb. 1, 1906 ; 1916 



Act of July 1,1902. as amend- 1 1,000,000 I June 1,1905! 1915 

ed by act of Feb. 6, 1905. ; | 1 
do ; 2, 000. 000 Jan. 2, 1907 1917 



13,500,000 



Due. 



1934 



1935 
1936 



1935 
1937 



To meet the interest and principal on these bonds ample sinking 
funds have been provided, and the bonds are now held on the market, 
notwithstanding the present depression, at prices well above those for 
which they were originally sold. 



friars' lands. 



The question of the disposition of the friars' lands is one which is 
occupying the close attention of the Secretary of the Interior and the 
Director of Lands. The price of the lands was about $7,000,000. 



REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PPIILIPPINES. 65 

Much delay has been encountered in making the necessary surveys 
;md the disposition of them for the present has largely been tempo- 
rary and at small rents in order to secure an attornment of all the 
tenants and the clear definition of the limits of the leaseholds claimed 
by them. This has involved considerable time and expense in making 
the^ necessary surveys. The injury to the sugar industry and the de- 
struction of draft cattle has affected the price and character of the 
sugar lands, and they have been allowed to grow up in cogon grass. 
This will require the investment of considerable capital to put them 
in sugar producing condition. It is estimated that the salable lands 
would amount in value to something over $5,000,000 and that the 
lands, mostly sugar, which are not now salable, and the plants which 
were bought with the lands, represent the other $2,000,000 of the pur- 
chase price. It will take some years to work out the cost and it is 
possible, as already prophesied, that there will be a considerable loss 
to the islands, but as the purchase was based on political. grounds and 
for the purpose of bringing on tranquillity, such a loss as that which 
was thought not improbable at the time of the purchase is amply com- 
pensated for in the general result. 

FINAL SETTLEMENT IN RESPECT TO CHARITABLE TRUSTS AND SPANISH- 
FILIPINO BANK WITH ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. 

I have spoken in previous reports of the controversies arising be- 
tween the Roman Catholic Church and the Philippine government in 
reference to the administration of certain charitable trusts. The 
same church was interested as a majority stockholder in the Spanish- 
Filipino Bank and a dispute had arisen as to the right of the bank to- 
exercise the power conferred on it by its original charter of issuing 
bank notes in an amount equal to three times its capital stock. A 
compromise was finally arranged last June with Archbishop Harty 
of Manila and was consummated during my visit to the Philippines. 
I submitted to you a full report of this compromise. It received 
your approval and was then carried into effect by the Philippine 
Commission. 

ROADS. 

The construction of roads by the central government has gone on 
each year, but the roads have not been kept up by the municipal gov- 
ernments charged with the duty as they ought to have been. The 
Commission has now established a system by which it is hoped ulti- 
mately that the whole matter of roads may receive a systematic im- 
petus throughout the islands. Roads can not be kept up in the 
33483—08 5 



66 REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

• 

Tropics except by what is known as the ^^caminero'^^ system, in which 
a small piece of each road shall be assigned to the repair and control 
of a road repairer to be known as the " caminero." The truth is that 
good roads will develop as the people develop, because the people 
can keep up the roads if they will, and it is not until they have a large 
sense of political responsibility that they are likely to sacrifice much 
to maintain them. 

RAILROADS IN THE PHILIPPINES. 

In my last annual report, I set forth in detail the concessions 
granted for the construction of railroads in Luzon, Panay, Cebu, and 
Negros, and showed that within five years we might expect that, in- 
stead of a single line of railway 120 miles in length which was all 
that we found when we occupied the islands, we would have a system 
with a mileage of 1,000 miles. Work has gone on in full compliance 
with the terms of the concessions of th^ two companies. 

Only one of these companies took advantage of the provision for 
the guaranty of bonds, and they have built about 40 miles of road 
and have earned, under the terms of the concession, the guaranty of 
$973,000 of bonds, which has already been signed and delivered by the 
Philippine government. Of course, in this financial panic these com- 
panies are likely to have difficulty in securing investors in their securi- 
ties. The roads as constructed have been well constructed, and are 
admirably adapted to resist the climatic conditions in the islands. 
There is no reason in my judgment why these roads when 
constructed should not pay a reasonable percentage upon the invest- 
ment. It is of the utmost difficulty to secure the coming of capital to 
the islands, and it would greatly aid us if the dividends earned by 
these roads were very large. In the Orient two-thirds of the income 
of railways comes from passenger earnings, and one-third from 
freight. Of course, the railroads are very essential to the agricultural 
interests of the country and will directly affect the amount of exports 
of agricultural products — so we may count on a steady increase in the 
freight receipts from the moment of their beginning operation. As 
I say, however, the chief hope for profit in the railways is in the 
passenger traffic. In the three Visayas in which the railroads are to 
be constructed, the density of population is about 160 per square mile, 
whereas the average population per square mile in the United States 
in 1900 was but 26. The Island of Cebu has a population of 336 per 
square mile, or a greater density than Japan, France, Germany, or 
British India. It is, therefore, reasonable to suppose that the pas- 
senger earnings on these railroads will be very large. It was antici- 
pated that the labor problem would be a difficult one to solve in the 
construction of these roads. This has not proved to be true. The 



KEPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 67 

Philippine labor has shown itself capable of instruction, and by 
proper treatment of being made constant in its application. Of 
course, the prices of labor have largely increased, but the companies 
constructing the roads have found it wise to increase wages, and 
thereby secure greater efficiency. Even with increased wages the 
cost of unit of result is less in the Philippines in the construction of 
railways than it is in the United States. Of course, the drain on the 
labor supply of sugar plantations and other places where agricultural 
labor is employed, is great and the effect upon raising sugar and 
other products is to increase the cost. But I think the lesson from the 
construction of the railroads is that Philippine labor can be improved 
by instruction and can be made effective and reasonably economical 
by proper treatment. The coming into the islands of the capital to 
construct railways, of course, has had a good effect in the improve- 
ment of business conditions, but it is to be noted that in the estimate 
of importations the railroad material and supplies- which are brought 
in free under the statute are not included in the totals, and there- 
fore are not to be offered as an explanation for the very good showing 
in respect to the amount of imports to the islands for the last fiscal 
year. 

GENERAL BUSINESS CONDITIONS. 

Of course, the depression in certain business branches of agricul- 
ture, like sugar, tobacco and rice, due to lack of markets for the first 
two, and to a lack of draft animals in the production of sugar and 
rice has had a direct effect upon the business of the islands of a de- 
pressing character. Gradually, however, business has grown better. 
In spite of adverse conditions the importations of rice have decreased 
from $12,000,000 gold to $3,500,000 gold, and, while the imports as 
a whole have increased not to their highest previous figure, they have 
been maintained within four and a half millions of their highest 
mark, and, as already said, the exports are higher than ever in the 
history of the islands, the balance of trade in their favor for the last 
fiscal year being about five millions, exclusive of gold and silver and 
government and railway free entries. 

I found in the islands a disposition on the part of both American 
and Philippine business men and of the leaders of all parties in the 
Philippine Assembly to make a united effort to improve business and 
general conditions. 

BUSINESS FUTURE OF PHILIPPINES. 

I do not hestitate to prophesy that during the next twenty-five years 
a development will take place in the agriculture and other business of 
the Philippine Islands, which will be as remarkable in its benefits to 



68 REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

the United States and the Philippine Islands as was the development 
of Alaska during the last ten or fifteen years. Hope of this is not 
what has actuated the government in pursuing the policy that it has 
pursued in the development of the islands, but this is as inevitable a 
result as if it had been directly sought, and perhaps the absence of 
selfishness in the development of the islands is a greater assurance of 
profitable return than if business exploitation by the United States 
had been the chief and sole motive. The growth in the production of 
hemp and other fiber products, in cocoanuts, in rubber and many other 
tropical crops and in peculiar manufactures of the islands may be 
looked forward to with certainty. 

GOLD STANDARD CURRENCY. 

One of the great benefits conferred upon the islands by the Ameri- 
can Government has been the introduction of the gold standard. This 
has doubtless prevented the larger profits which were made in the old 
days by the purchasers of hemp and other agricultural products in the 
islands, who sold again in European and American markets, because 
under the system then prevailing, they bought in silver and sold 
in gold, and by watching the markets they were able to add very much 
to the legitimate profit of the middlemen by what constituted a system 
of gambling in exchanges. The same features characterized the 
banking in the islands. Now, however, with the gold standard the 
gambling feature in business is very largely eliminated. The coinage 
is satisfactory to the people, the silver certificates circulate well and 
are popular, and there seems to be no ground for complaint of the 
currency. 

NEED or CAPITAL AGRICULTURAL BANK. 

One of the crying needs of the Philippines is capital, and this 
whether it be for the development of railroads, wagon roads, manu- 
factures, or in the promotion of agriculture. The usurious interest 
which has to be paid by the farmers is so high as to leave very little 
for his profit and maintenance and ever since we entered the islands 
the cry for an agricultural bank which would lend money for a 
reasonable interest, say, 10 per cent, has been urged upon the Com- 
mission. Last year Congress authorized the government to guar- 
antee the interest at 4 per cent on a certain amount of capital in- 
vested in such a bank, but up to this time no one has embraced the 
opportunity thus offered to undertake the conduct and operation of 
a bank although negotiations are pending looking to such a result. 
It is now proposed that the government shall undertake this instead 
of a private individual. Experimentation has been attempted on the 



EEPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR OK THE PHILIPPINES. 69 

friars' lands by the appropriation of $100,000 for loans to the friar 
tenants to encourage them to improve agriculture, and the result 
of this experiment will be awaited with great interest. 

The reduction of the amount of silver in the silver peso for the pur- 
pose of keeping it within the 50-cent gold value, which is the legal 
standard, has gone steadily on and will result ultimately in the accu- 
mulation in the treasury of a fund of $3,000,000 gold. It is thought 
that part of this money might be taken to establish an agricul- 
tural bank on a governmental basis. The treasurer of the islands, 
Mr. Branagan, who has had large experience in banking in the 
islands, because his office has brought him closely into contact with 
it and because he has had to examine all the banks, is confident 
that an agricultural bank of one or two millions of dollars might be 
established by the government and managed by the treasury de- 
partment, together with the provincial treasurers in such a way as 
greatly to aid the cause of agriculture in the islands. One great dif- 
ficulty in the operation of an agricultural bank is the uncertainty that 
prevails to-day in the islands in respect to the titles of the lands 
which are held. The land law provided a method of perfecting titles 
through what is called the land court founded on the Torrens land 
system, which was introduced by law some years ago in the islands. 
The expense of surveying the lands, due to the shortness of supply 
of surveyors, and the time taken has made the process of settling titles 
rather slow, but as defects have appeared the Commission has changed 
them and it is hoped that this system of preparing for the business 
of an agricultural bank may go on apace. 

POSTAL SAVINGS BANK. 

A postal savings bank has been established and was first more pat- 
ronized by Americans than Filipinos, but Filipinos are now taking 
it up and the deposits therein amount to upward of 1,000,000 pesos. 
There have been practically no banking facilities throughout the 
islands, except in Manila, Iloilo, and Cebu, and this establishment of 
postal savings-bank offices in a large proportion of the post-offices 
throughout the islands offers an opportunity to the people of moder- 
ate means to put their money in a secure place and to derive a small 
revenue therefrom. The insecurity of savings by Filipino farmers 
and others in the country has certainly reduced the motive for saving 
which an opportunity to deposit their money will stimulate. The 
exchange business of the islands has also been facilitated by statutory 
provisions authorizing the sale of exchange by provincial treasurers 
on the central treasury at Manila and vice versa. 



70 



REPOKT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPIl^ES. 



POST-OFFICE AND TELEGRAPHS. 

The post-office department, considering the conditions that exist 
and the difficulties of reaching remote parts of the island, has been 
Yery well managed and the offices are increasing in encouraging 
proportion each year. 

The following table shows the increase in postal facilities from 
year to year of our occupation : 



For fiscal year ending June so. po^s?-Sfices. 


Money or- 
der offices. 


Number 
employees. 


Stamp 
sales. 


1900 


- . .- 19 




113 


P228, 178. 36 


190] 


24 


24 


130 


233, 182. 96 


1902 


90 


31 


331 


238. 418. iO 


1903 


209 


33 


570 


248, 414. 36 


1904 


291 


63 


579 


224,354.61 


1905 


414 


62 


612 


222, 701. 36 


1906 


476 


60 


1,003 


425,261.50 


1907 


; 505 


63 


1,091 


607, 203. 44 



Under a system devised by Mr. Forbes, secretary of commerce and 
police, mail subsidies were granted to commercial lines on condition 
that good service at reasonable rates of transportation should be fur- 
nished upon safe and commodious steamers. The Government vessels 
which had previously been purchased in order -to promote intercourse 
between the islands are now used on outlying routes where commercial 
lines will not take up the traffic, but are used in connection with the 
commercial lines, and in this way additional routes are being tested 
and the marine commerce between all the islands is made to increase. 

By consent of the Secretary of War, and on the recommendation 
of the commanding general of the Philippines and the agreement 
of the civil government, all the telegraph lines in the islands have 
now been transferred to the post-office department of the civil gov- 
ernment of the Philippines. These telegraph lines reach into the 
remotest provinces and to all the principal islands of the large archi- 
pelago. 'While there were some telegraph lines in the Spanish times, 
the system has grown to such proportions now as to be almost an 
entirely new system. It has made the government of the islands 
much more easy beca^use it brings every province within half a day's 
communication of Manila for information and instructions from 
the central authority. It has furnished a most profitable instru- 
ment for business communication, and while it entails considerable 
burden on the ci'sdl government, it is well worth for governmental 
and business purposes all that it costs. I ought to say that the post- 
office department is rapidly training Filipinos to fill all the positions 
of telegraph operators, and that this materially reduces the cost of 
operation and at the same time furnishes an admirable technical 
school for great numbers of bright Filipino young men. I submit a 
statement of the mileage of the cables and telegraph lines operated by 
the Government. 



KEPOET OF SECKETARY OF WAE ON THE PHILIPPINES. 71 

1906. 

Miles. , Miles. 
Lines transferred to the insnlar government br the Signal Corps 
up to June 30 : 

Telegraph lines 3, 780 

Cable lines 328 

Telephone lines 2, 137 

Total 6, 245 

Lines operated by the Signal Corps on June 30 : 

Telegraph lines 1, 406 

Cable lines 1,452 

Telephone lines 338 

Total 3, 196 



Total mileage of telegraph, cable, and telephone lines in operation 
June 30 9,441 

Number of telegraph oflQces 161 

Number of telephones in operation 450 

1907. 

Lines transferred to the insular government by the Signal Corps since 

July 1, 1907 1,914.5 

Total mileage of telegraph and cable lines in operation by the insular 

government to date^ 6, 951 

MINES AND MINING. 

There has been a good deal of prospecting in the islands and gold 
and copper have been found in paying quantities in the mountains 
of northern Luzon, the provinces of Benguet and Bontoc and Le- 
panto, as well as in the Camarines in southeastern Luzon, and in 
Masbate, an island lying directly south of Luzon ; but great complaint 
is made, and properly made, of the limitations upon the mining law 
which prevent the location by one person of more than one claim on 
a lode or vein. Mining is such a speculative matter at any rate, and 
the capital that one puts into it is so generally lost that it would 
seem that, in a country like the Philippines where development 
ought to be had, there should be liberal inducements for the invest- 
ment of capital for such a purpose. Secretary Worcester of the inte- 
rior department has frequently recommended that this limitation of. 
the law be repealed. The Commission joins in this recommendation 
and I cordially concur. 

While I do not favor large land holdings, I also concur in the 
recommendation of the secretary of the interior and the Commission 
that the prohibition upon corporations holding more than 2,500 acres 
of land be also stricken out. It certainly might well be increased to 
10,000 acres if any limitation is to be imposed at all. 

U. S. COASTWISE TRADING LAAVS. 

It is proposed by some to put in force the coastwise trading laws in 
respect to the navigation between the United States and the islands. I 



72 REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

think this a very short-sighted policy. To-day the trade between the 
United States and the islands, export and import, is about 28 per cent 
of the total. The proportion of the total export trade from the Phil- 
ippines to the United States is growing and is certain to grow more 
rapidly in the future, especially if proper legislation is adopted in 
respect to sugar and tobacco. Now a coastwise trading law will ex- 
clude altogether the use of foreign bottoms between the ports of the 
United States and the ports of the Philippine Islands, and will con- 
fine that commerce to United States vessels. There is very grave 
doubt whether there are enough United States vessels to carry on this 
trade as it is, and even if there were they could not carry on the trade 
without a very great increase in freight rates over what they now are. 
The minute that these rates are advanced, while the rates to other 
countries remain the same, the trade between the islands and the 
United States will cease to be. There will be no trade for the vessels 
of the United States to carry, no one will have been benefited in 
the United States, and the only person who will reap advantage is the 
foreign exporter to whom the Philippine business house will naturally 
turn for exchange of products. The only method possible by which 
the United States vessels can be given the Philippine trade is by 
voting a reasonable subsidy for United States vessels engaged in that 
trade. Any other prohibitive or exclusive provision of law will be 
merely cutting off the nose to spite the face of the interest which 
attempts it. I feel certain that when the question of applying the 
coastwise trading laws to the business between the United States and 
the islands is fully investigated, even those representing the shipping 
interests that need and ought to have much encouragement will con- 
clude that the coastwise trading laws applied to the American Philip- 
pine trade would merely destroy the trade without benefiting the 
shipping interests. 

In the criticisms upon the Government's Philippine policy to be 
found in the columns of the newspapers that favor immediate sepa- 
ration, it has been frequently said that the coastwise trading laws 
of the United States apply as between islands of the Philippines. 
The truth is that the restrictions upon shipping between ports in the 
Philippine Islands are what the Legislature of the islands imposes, 
and Congress has made no provision of limitation in respect to them. 
The coastwise regulations in force within the Archipelago are as lib- 
eral as possible. 

CITY or MANILA. 

The city of Manila is the social, political, and business center of the 
islands. It is the only large city in the islands. Its population is 
about 250,000, while there is no other city that exceeds 40,000 in 



EEPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 73 

population. By what now has been proven to be a mistake, the Com- 
mission purchased a building which was knoT^n and used as the 
Oriente Hotel. It was a hotel not very well conducted, but it was the 
only important hotel in the city of sufficient size and dignity to induce 
the coming of tourists. It was hoped that the purchase of this build- 
ing, which was not particularly adapted as a hotel, might lead to the 
construction and maintenance of a better hotel. Such has not been 
the result, and although there are hotels in the city of Manila, its 
reputation is that of being unable to furnish to the traveling public a 
comfortable hostelry for a short stay. This has driven away many 
travelers of our own country and other countries from a city that in 
historical interest, in beauty, and in comfort of life will compare 
favorably with any. 

Mr. Burnham, the well-known landscape architect of Chicago, 
some years ago, without compensation, visited the Philippines and 
mapped out a plan for the improvement of the city, and laid out a 
plan of construction for Baguio in Benguet as the summer capital. 
To both of these plans, all improvements which have been attempted 
in the city have conformed, and if the present efficient city govern- 
ment continues, there is every reason to believe that Manila will be- 
come a most attractive city. A contract has been made for the leas- 
ing of ground immediately upon the Luneta and facing the bay to a 
firm of capitalists for the construction of a hotel to cost 500,000 pesos. 
It is doubtful, however, whether this capital can be raised at the 
present time, and if it falls through it is proposed, and I think with 
wisdom proposed, that the government shall erect a hotel as a public 
investment for the development of the city and the islands, and lease 
it to the best bidder. 

There is no city in the world better governed than Manila. The 
streets are well cleaned, are well policed, there is a most excellent fire 
department, the parks are being enlarged and improved, the street 
car system is as good as any anywhere, and with the improvements in 
the water supply the sewerage system and esteros or canals, which 
are now under foot and part of which are quite near accomplished, 
the face which the Filipinos turn toward the world in the city of 
Manila will be a most pleasing one. 

POLITICAL FUTURE OF THE ISLANDS. 

There are in the Philippines many who wish that the government 
shall declare a definite policy in respect to the islands so that they 
may know what that policy is. I do not see how any more definite 
policy can be declared than was declared by President McKinley in 
his instructions to Secretary Root for the guidance of the Philippine 



74 REPORT OF SECRETARY OE WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

Commission, which was incorporated into law by the organic act of 
the Philippine government, adopted July 1, 1902. That policy is de- 
clared to be the extension of self-government to the Philippine 
Islands by gradual steps from time to time as the people of the 
islands shall show themselves fit to receive the additional responsi- 
bility, and that policy has been consistently adhered to in the last 
seven years now succeeding the establishment of civil government. 

Having taken some part and sharing in the responsibility for that 
government, of course my views of the results are likely to be colored 
by my interest in having tne policy regarded as successful, but elim- 
inating as far as is possible the personal bias, 1 believe it to be true 
that the conditions in the islands to-day vindicate and justify that 
policy. It necessarily involves in its ultimate conclusion as the steps 
toward self-government become greater and greater the ultimate inde- 
pendence of the islands, although of course if both the United States 
and the islands were to conclude after complete self-government were 
possible that it would be mutually beneficial to continue a govern- 
mental relation between them like that between England and Aus- 
tralia, there would be nothing inconsistent with the present policy in 
such a result. 

Any attempt to fix the time in which complete self-government may 
be conferred upon the Filipinos in their own interest, is I think most 
unwise. The key of the whole policy outlined by President McKinley 
and adopted by Congress was that of the education of the masses of 
the people and the leading them out of the dense ignorance in which 
they are now, with a view to enabling them intelligently to exercise 
the force of public opinion without which a popular self-government 
is impossible. 

It seems to me reasonable to say that such a condition can not be 
reached until at least one generation shall have been subjected to 
the process of primary and industrial education, and that when it is 
considered that the people are divided into groups speaking from ten 
to fifteen different dialects, and that they must acquire a common 
medium of communication, and that one of the civilized languages, 
it is not unreasonable to extend the necessary period beyond a genera- 
tion. By that time English will be the language of the islands and we 
can be reasonably certain that a great majority of those living there 
will not only speak and read and write English, but will be affected by 
the knowledge of free institutions, and will be able to understand their 
rights as members of the community and to seek to enforce them 
against the pernicious system of caciquism and local bossism, which I 
have attempted in this report to describe. 

But it is said that a greats majority of the people desire immediate 
independence. I am not prepared to say that if the real wish of the 
majoritj^ of all the people, men. women, and children, educated and 



EEPOKT OF SECRETAKY OF WAH ON THE PHILIPPINES. 75 

uneducated, were to be obtained, there would not be a very large 
majority in favor of immediate independence. It would not, how- 
ever, be an intelligent judgment based on a knowledge of what in- 
dependence means, of what its responsibilities are or of what popular 
government in its essence is. But the mere fact that a majority of all 
the people are in favor of immediate independence is rot a reason 
why that should be granted, if we assume at all the correctness of 
the statement, which impartial observers can not but fail to acquiesce 
in, to wit : that the Filipinos are not now fit for self-government. 

The policy of the United States is not to establish an oligarchy, 
but a popular self-government in the Philippines. The electorate to 
which it has been thought wise to extend partial self-government em- 
braces only about 15 or 20 per cent of the adult male population, be- 
cause it has been generallj^ conceded, by Filipinos and Americans 
alike that those not included within the electorate are wholly unable 
to exercise political responsibility. Now, those persons who de- 
manded and were given a hearing before the delegation of Congress- 
men and Senators that visited the islands in 1905, to urge immediate 
independence contended that the islands are fit for self-government 
because there are from 7 to 10 per cent of intelligent people who are 
constituted by nature a ruling class, while there are 90 per cent that 
are a servile and obedient class, and that the presence of the two 
classes together argues a well balanced government. Such a proposi- 
tion thus aA^owed reveals what is known otherwise to be the fact that, 
many of those most emphatic and urgent in seeking independence in 
the islands have no thought of a popular government at all. They 
are in .favor of a close government in which they, the leaders of a 
particular class, shall exercise control of the rest of the people. Their 
views are thus wholly at variance with the polic}^ of the United States 
in the islands. 

The presence of the Americans in the islands is essential to the due 
development of the lower classes and the preservation of their rights. 
If the American government can only remain in the islands long 
enough to educate the entire people, to give them a language which 
enables them to come into contact with modern civilization, and to ex- 
tend to them from time to time additional political rights so that by 
the exercise of them they shall learn the use and responsibilities 
necessary to their proper exercise, independence can be granted with 
entire safety to the people. I have an abiding conviction that the 
Filipino people are capable of being taught self-government in the 
process of their development, that in carrying out this policy they 
will be improved physically and mentally, and that, as they acquire 
more rights, their poAver to exercise moral restraints upon themselves 
will be strengthened and improved. Meantime they Avill be able to 
see, and the American public Avill come to see the enormous material 



76 REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

benefit to both arising from the maintenance of some sort of a bond 
between the two countries which shall preserve their mutually bene- 
ficial business relations. 

No one can have studied the East without having been made aware 
that in the development of China, Japan and all Asia, are to be pre- 
sented the most important political questions for the next century, 
and that in the pursuit of trade between the Occident and the Orient 
the having such an outpost as the Philippines, making the United 
States an Asiatic power for the time, will be of immense benefit to 
its merchants and its trade. While I have always refrained from 
making this the chief reason for the retention of the Philippines, be- 
cause the real reason lies in the obligation of the United States to 
make this people fit for self-government and then to turn the govern- 
ment over to them, I don't think it improper, in order to secure 
support for the policy, to state such additional reason. The severe 
criticism to which the policy of the Government in the Philippines 
has been subjected by English Colonial statesmen and students, should 
not hinder our pursuit of it in the slightest. It is of course opposed 
to the policy usually pursued in the English government in dealing 
with native races, because in common with other colonial powers, 
most of England's colonial statesmen have assumed that the safest 
course was to keep the native peoples ignorant and quiet, and that any 
education which might furnish a motive for agitation was an inter- 
ference with the true and proper course of government. Our policy 
is an experiment, it is true, and it assumes the risk of agitation and 
sedition which may arise from the overeducation of ambitious poli- 
ticians or misdirected patriots, in order that the whole body of the 
people may a^cquire sufficient intelligence ultimately to exercise gov- 
ernmental control themselves. 

Thus far the policy of the Philippines has worked. It has been 
attacked on the ground that we have gone too fast, that we have given 
the natives too much power. The meeting of the assembly and the 
conservative tone of that body thus far disclosed, makes for our view 
rather than that of our opponents, but had the result been entirely 
different with the assembly, and had there been a violent outbreak at 
first in its deliberations and attempts at obstruction. I should not 
have been in the least discouraged, because ultimately I should have 
had confidence that the assembly would learn how foolish ^uch exhibi- 
tions were and how little good they accomplished for the members 
of the assembly or the people whom they represented. The fact that 
this natural tendency was restrained is an indication of the general 
conservatism of the Filipino people. 

Though bearing the name of immediate independistas, the mem- 
bers of the controlling party of the assembly are far from being in 
favor of a policy which those words strictly construed would mean. 



KEPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 77 

Moreover, the recent election held, since the Assembly was organized, 
in which fifteen progresista and fifteen nationalista governors were 
elected, is an indication that the nationalist feeling is by no means 
so overwhelming as was at first reported when the returns from the 
election of the assembly were published in the press. 

The fact that Filipinos are given an oportunity now to take part 
in the forming of the governmental policies in the islands, will I 
hope satisfy many of them that the United States is in earnest in 
attempting to educate them to self-government, will so occupy their 
ambitions and minds as to make the contention for immediate in- 
dependence more of an ideal than of a real issue, will make more 
permanent and lasting the present satisfactory conditions as to peace 
and tranquillity in the islaiids, and will turn their attention toward 
the development of the prosperity of the islands by improvement of 
its material conditions and the uplifting of the people by their educa- 
tion, sanitation and general instruction in their political, social and 
material responsibilities. 

There has been in the United States in the last year a recurring 
disposition on the part of many of the press and many public men to 
speak of the Philippine policy as if foredoomed to failure, and the 
condition of the islands as a most deplorable one. No one who knew 
the islands in 1900, and who has visited them during the present year 
and especially during the meeting of the assembly can honestly and 
fairly share such views. To one actually responsible in any degree 
for the present conditions by reason of taking part in the government 
of those islands, the changes made and the progress made under the 
circumstances are most gratifying. 

COST OF THE PRESENT GOVEHNMENT OF THE ISLANDS. 

The most astounding and unfair statements have appeared in the 
press from time to time and have been uttered by men of political 
prominence who should know better, in respect to the cost to the 
United States of the Philippine Islands. The question of the cost of 
the islands to the United States as affecting its future policy can not 
of course include the cost of a war into which the United States was 
forced against its will, and which whether it ought to have been car- 
ried on or not, was carried on and was finished more than five years 
ago. The only question of cost that is relevant to the present dis- 
cussion is the cost to the United States of the maintenance of the 
present Philippine government, including in that the cost of the 
maintenance of that part of the army of the United States which is 
in the Philippine Islands. Nor is it fair to include the entire cost of 
the army of the United States in the Philippine Islands for the rea- 
son that even if we did not have the Philippines, we should certainly 



78 REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

retain the present size of our standing army which hardly exceeds 
60,000 effective men, a very small army for 80,000,000 people. More- 
over, it is worthy of note that the greatest increase in the Army of 
recent years has been in that branch of the service — to wit, the coast 
artillery — which has not been nsed in the Philippines for some years. 

The only additional cost therefore that the maintenance of the 
army can be said to entail upon the United States is the additional 
cost of maintaining 12,000 soldiers in the islands over what it would 
be to maintain the same number of soldiers in the United States. 
This has been figured out and roughly stated amounts to about $250 
a man or $3,000,000, together with the maintenance of 4,000 Philip- 
pine Scouts at a cost of $500 a man, or in all $2,000,000, which makes 
a total annual expenditure of $5,000,000. The United States at 
present contributes something, perhaps $200,000, to the expense of the 
coast survey of the islands. With, this exception, there is not one cent 
expended from the treasury of the United States for the maintenance 
of the government in the islands. The additional cost of the 12,000 
men in the islands, figured above at $250 a man, includes the cost of 
transportation and the additional cost of food supplies and other 
matters. 

There is an item of cost, which perhaps may be charged to the Phil- 
ippine Islands. I refer to the expense of fortifying the bay of Manila, 
the port of Iloilo and the port of Cebu, so that in holding the islands 
the United States shall not be subject to sudden and capricious attack 
by any ambitious power. This may reach a total of ten millions. But 
it is hardly fair to charge this to the Philippine policy; for almost 
everyone concedes the necessity of maintaining and fortifying coal- 
ing stations in the Orient whether we have the Philippines or not. 

The question is, therefore, whether, in order to avoid the expendi- 
ture of $5,000,000 a year, the United States should pursue the humili- 
ating policy of scuttle, should run away from an obligation which it 
has assumed to make the Philippines a permanently s^lf-governing 
comanunity, and should miss an opportunity at the same time of build- 
ing up a profitable trade and securing a position in the Orient that 
can not but be of the utmost advantage in obtaining and maintaining 
its proper proportion of Asiatic and Pacific trade. 

From time to time there has been quite severe criticism of the 
present Philippine government on the ground that it is such an ex- 
pensive government as to be burdensome to the people. The facts 
are that the taxes which fall upon the common people are much less 
than they ever were under the Spanish regime. The taxes which 
fall upon the wealthy are considerably more, because as a matter of 
fact the Spanish system of taxation was largely devised for the pur- 
pose of avoiding taxation of the wealth of the islands. I have not at 
hand and am not able to insert in this report the figures and statistics 



EEPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 79 

which demonstrate this fact. They are now being prepared in 
Manila, and I hope at some future date to submit them for your con- 
sideration. Not only is the comparison to be instituted with the con- 
ditions existing under the Spanish regime, but also with the taxa- 
tion of other dependencies. The data with respect to these are difficult 
to get and frequently liable gi'eatly to mislead when the conditions of 
each particular colony are not fully understood and stated. But my 
information is derived from Governor Smith and Mr. Forbes that the 
cost per capita of the government of the Philippines will compare 
most favorably with that of colonial governments presenting sub- 
stantially similar conditions. 

The reports from the governor-general, the heads of departments 
and of bureaus have not reached Washington. I was able before I 
left the islands to read informal drafts of some of them and much 
of the information as to the last year's operations I have derived 
from them. I shall submit the reports immediately upon their arrival. 

RECOMMENDATIONS. 

I therefore recommend: 

First. That legislation be adopted by Congress admitting the prod- 
ucts of the Philippine Islands to the markets of the United States, 
with such reasonable limitations as may remove fear of interference 
with the tobacco and sugar interest^ in the United States; 

Second. That the present restrictions be removed as to the acquisi- 
tion of mining claims and the holding of lands by corporations in 
the Philippines ; 

Third. That further legislation be passed authorizing the Philip- 
pine government, if it chooses, to open and conduct an agricultural 
bank, with a capital not exceeding $2,000,000; and 

Fourth. That the coastwise laws of the United States be made per- 
manently inapplicable to the trade between the ports of the islands 
and the ports of the United States. 

Sincerely, yours, Wm. H. Taft. 

The President. 



k 



ADDRESS BY WM. H. TAFT, SECRETARY OF WAR, AT 

THE INAUGURATION OF THE PHILIPPINE 

ASSEMBLY, OCTOBER 16, 1907. 



33483—08 6 81 



ADDRESS BY WM. H. TAFT, SECRETARY OF WAR. 



Gentlemen of the Assembly: President Roosevelt has sent me 
to convey to you and the Fihpino people his congratulations upon 
another step in the enlargement of popular self-government in these 
Islands. I have the greatest personal pleasure in being the bearer of 
this message. It is intended for each and every member of the Assem- 
bly, no matter what his views upon the issues which were presented in 
the late electoral campaign. It assumes that he is loyal to the gov- 
ernment in which he now proposes, imder oath of allegiance, to take 
part. It does not assume that he may not have a wish to bring 
about, either soon or in the far future, by peaceable means, a transfer 
of sovereignty; but it does assume that while the present govern- 
ment endures, he will loyally do all he lawfully can to uphold its 
authority and to make it useful to the Filipino people. 

I am aware that, in view of the issues discussed at the election of 
this Assembly, I am expected to say something regarding the policy 
of the United States toward these Islands. Before attempting any 
such task, it is well to make clear the fact that I can not speak with 
the authority of one who may control that policy. 

The Philippine Islands are territory belonging to the United States, 
and by the Constitution, the branch of that Government vested with 
the power, and charged with the duty, of making rules and regula- 
tions for their government is Congress. The policy to be pursued 
with respect to them is, therefore, ultimately for Congress to determine. 
Of course, in the act establishing a government for the Philippine Islands 
passed by Congress July 1, 1902, wide discretion has been vested 
in the President to shape affairs in the Islands, within the limitations 
of the act, through the appointment of the Governor and the Com- 
mission, and the power of the Secretary of War to supervise their 
work and to veto proposed legislation; but not onty is the transfer 
of sovereignty to an independent government of the Filipino people 
wholly within the jurisdiction of Congress, but so also is the extension 
of any popular political control in the present government beyond 
that conferred in the organic act. It is embarrassing, therefore, for 
me, though I am charged with direct supervision of the Islands 
under the President, to deal in any way with issues relating to their 
ultimate disposition. It is true that the peculiar development of 
the government of the Islands under American sovereignty has 

83 



84 REPORT OF SECEETAEY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

given to the attitude of the President upon such issues rather more 
significance than in most matters of exclusively Congressional cog- 
nizance. After the exchange of ratifications of the treaty of Paris 
in April of 1899, and until the organic act of July 1, 1902, Congress 
acquiesced in the government of the Islands by the President as 
Commander in Chief of the Army and Nav}^ without interference, 
and when it passed the organic act it not only confirmed in every 
respect the anomalous quasi-civil government which he had created, 
but it also made his instructions to the Secretary of War part of its 
statute, and followed therein his reconunendation as to future exten- 
sion of popular political control. This close adherence of Congress 
to the views of the Executive in respect to the Islands in the past 
gives ground for ascribing to Congress approval of the Philippine 
policy, as often declared by President McKinley and President Roose- 
velt. Still, I have no authority to speak for Congress in respect 
to the ultimate disposition of the Islands. I can only express an 
opinion as one familiar with the circumstances likely to affect Con- 
gress, in the light of its previous statutory action. 

The avowed policy of the National Administration under these two 
Presidents has been and is to govern the Islands, having regard to the 
interest and welfare of the Filipino people, and by the spread of gen- 
eral primary and industrial education and by practice in partial 
political control to fit the people themselves to maintain a stable and 
well-ordered government affording equality of right and opportunity 
to all citizens. The policy looks to the improvement of the people 
both industrially and in self-governing capacity. As this policy of 
extending control continues, it must logically reduce- and finally end 
the sovereignty of the United States in the Islands, unless it shall 
seem wise to the American and the Filipino peoples, on account of 
mutually beneficial trade relations and possible advantage to the 
Islands in their foreign relations, that the bond shall not be com- 
pletely severed. 

How long this process of political preparation of the Filipino people 
is likely to be is a question which no one can certainly answer. When 
I was in the Islands the last time, I ventured the opinion that it would 
take considerably longer than a generation. I have not changed my 
view upon this point; but the issue is one upon which opinions differ. 
However this may be, I believe that the policy of the Administration 
as outlined above is as definite as the policy of any government in a 
matter of this kind can safely be made. We are engaged in working 
out a great experiment. No other nation has attempted it, and for us 
to fix a certain number of years in which the experiment must be- 
come a success and be completely realized would be, in my judgment, 
unwise. As I premised, however, this is a question for settlement by 
the Congress of the United States. 



KEPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 85 

Our Philippine policy has been subjected to the severest con- 
demnation by critics who occupy points of view as widely apart 
as the two poles. There are those who say that we have gone too 
fast, that we have counted on the capacity of the Filipino for polit- 
ical development with a foolish confidence leading to what they 
regard as the disastrous result of this election. There are others 
who assert that we have denied the Filipino that which is every 
man's birthright — to govern himself — and have been guilty of tyranny 
and a violation of American principles in not turning the govern- 
ment over to the people of the Islands at once. 

With your permission, I propose to consider our policy in the 
light of the events of the six years during which it has been pur- 
sued, to array the difficulties of the situation which we have had 
to meet and to mention in some detail what has been accomplished. 

The Civil Government was inaugurated in 1901 before the close 
of a war between the forces of the United States and the control- 
ling elements of the Philippine people. It had sufficient popular 
support to overawe many of those whose disposition was friendly 
to the Americans. In various provinces the war was continued 
intermittently for a year after the appointment of a Civil Governor 
in July, 1901. This was not an auspicious beginning for the organi- 
zation of a people into a peaceful community acknowledging alle- 
giance to an alien power. 

Secondly, there was, in the United States, a strong minority party 
that lost no opportunity to denounce the policy of the Government 
and to express sympathy with those arrayed in arms against it, and 
declared in party platform and in other ways its intention, should 
it come into power, to turn the Islands over to an independent gov- 
ernment of their people. This not only prolonged the war, but when 
peace finally came, it encouraged a sullenness on the part of many 
Filipinos and a lack of interest in the progress and development of 
the existing government, that were discouraging. It offered the 
hope of immediate independence at the coming of every national 
election by the defeat of the Administration at the polls. This was 
not of assistance in carrying out a policy that depended for its work- 
ing on the political education of the people by their cordial partici- 
pation, first, in the new municipal and provincial governments, and 
finally in the election of a National Assembly. The result has been 
that during the educational process there has been a continuing con- 
troversy as to the political capacity of the Filipino people. It has 
naturally been easy to induce a majority of the electorate to believe 
that they are now capable of maintaining a stable government. All 
this has tended to divert the people's attention from the existing 
government, although their useful participation in that must measure 
their progress toward fitness for complete autonomy. 



86 REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

The impatience of the popular majority for further power may be 
somewhat mitigated as the 'extent of the poHtical control which is 
placed in the hands of the people increases, and^ as they become 
more familiar with the responsibilities and the difl&culties of actual 
power. The difference between the attitude of an irresponsible critic 
who has behind him the easily aroused prejudices of a people against 
an alien government, and that of one who attempts to formulate 
legislation which shall accomplish a definite purpose for the good of 
his own people is a healthful lesson for the ambitious statesman to 
learn. 

Other formidable political obstacles had to be overcome. There 
still remained present in the situation in 1901 the smoldering ashes of 
the issues which had led the people to rebel against the power of 
Spain — I mean the prospective continuance of the influence of the 
regular religious orders in the parocliial administration of the Roman 
Catholic Church in the Islands and their ownership of most valuable 
and extensive agricultural lands in the most populous provinces. 
The change of sovereignty to a Government which could exercise 
no control over the Church in its selection of its agents made the 
new regime powerless, by act or decree, to prevent the return of the 
friars to the parishes, and yet the people were . disposed to hold the 
Government responsible whenever this was proposed. It would have 
been fraught wdth great danger of political disturbance. It was 
also essential that the religious orders -should cease to be agricultural 
landlords in order to eliminate the agrarian question arising between 
them and sixty thousand tenants which had played so large a part 
in the previous insurrections against Spain. These results were to be 
attained without offending, or infringing upon the rights of, the Roman 
Catholic Church, the influence of which for good in the Islands could 
not be denied. Other political difficulties attending the transfer of 
a sovereignty from a Government in which the interests of the State 
and^the Church were inextricably united to one in which they must 
be absolutely separated, I need not stop to elaborate. The religious 
and property controversies arising out of the Aglipayan schism, and 
the disturbances caused, added much to the burden of the Gov- 
ernment. 

The novelty of the task for the United States and her people, 
the lack ot the existence of a trained body of colonial administrators 
and civil servants, the dependence for a time upon men as govern- 
ment agents who had com.e out in a spirit of adventure to the Islands 
and some of whom proved not to be fitted either by character or expe- 
rience for the discharge of responsible public duties, gave additional 
cause for discouragement. 

Another great difficulty in working out our policy in these Islands 
has been the reluctance of capitalists to invest money here. Political 



BEPOKT OP SECRETABY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 87 

privileges, if unaccompanied by opportunities to better their condi- 
tion, are not likely to produce permanent contentment among a 
people. Hence the political importance of developing the resources 
of these Islands for the benefit of its inhabitants. This can only be 
done by attracting capital. Capital must have the prospect of secur- 
ity in the investment and a certain return of profit before it will be- 
come available. The constant agitation for independence in the 
Islands, apparently supported by the minorit}^ party in the United 
States, and the well-founded fear that an independent Phihppine 
government now established would not be permanent and stable 
have made capitalists chary of attempting to develop the natural 
resources of the Islands. The capital which has come has only come 
reluctantly and on terms less favorable to the public than would 
have been exacted under other conditions. 

Another difficulty of the same character as the last in preventing 
material progress has been the failure of Congress to open the mar- 
kets of the United States to the free admission of Philippine sugar 
and tobacco. In every other way Congress has shown its entire and 
generous sympathy with the policy of the Administration; and in 
this matter the popular branch of thai^ body passed the requisite bill 
for the purpose by a large majority. Certain tobacco and sugar 
interests of the United States, however, succeeded in strangling the 
measure in the Senate committee. I have good reason for hope that 
in the next Congress we may be able to secure a compromise measure 
which shall restore the sugar and tobacco agriculture of the Islands 
to its former prosperity, and at the same time b}^ limitations upon 
the amounts of importation allay the fears of injury on the part of 
the opponents of the measure. Still, the delay in this much-needed 
relief has greatly retarded the coming of prosperous times and has 
much discouraged supporters of our policy in America who have 
thought this indicated a lack of national purpose to make the present 
altruistic policy a success. 

But the one thing that interfered with material progress in the 
Islands, more than all other causes put together, was the rinder- 
pest which carried away from 75 to 80 per cent of the cattle that 
were absolutely indispensable in cultivating, reaping, and disposing 
of the agricultural products upon which the Islands are wholly 
dependent. The extent of this terrible disaster can not be exag- 
gerated and the Islands have not yet recovered from it. Attempts 
to remedy the evil by the importation of cattle from other countries 
have proved futile, and the Islands can not be made whole in this 
respect except by the natural reproduction of the small fraction of 
the animals that escaped destruction. This is not a matter of a 
year, or of two ^^ears or of three years, but a matter of a decade. 
Then, too, there were in these years surra, locusts, drought, destruc- 



88 REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

tive typhoons, cholera, bubonic plague and smallpox, ladronism, 
and pulajanism. The long period of disturbance, of guerrilla war- 
fare and unrest, which interfered for years with the carrying on of 
the peaceful arts of agriculture and made it so easy for those who 
had been used to work in the fields to assume the wild and loose 
Hfe of predatory bands claiming to be hberating armies, all made 
a burden for the commimity that it was almost impossible for it to 
bear. 

When I consider all these difficulties, which I have rehearsed at 
too great length, and then take account of the present conditions 
in the Islands, it seems to me that they present an occasion for pro- 
found satisfaction and that they fully vindicate the policy which has 
been pursued. 

How have we met the difficulties ? In the first place, we have car- 
ried out with entire fideHty the promises of Presidents McKinley and 
Koosevelt in respect to the gradual extension of political control in 
the Government as the people should show themselves fit. In 1901 
the Commission adopted the Municipal Code, which vested complete 
autonomy in the adult m.ale citizens of every municipality in the 
Islands, except that of Manila, which for special reasons, Kke those 
which have prevailed with respect to the government of the city of 
Washington, was preserved for control by the Central Government. 
The electorate was limited to those who could speak English or 
Spanish, or who paid a tax of ^15 a year, or who had filled municipal 
office under the Spanish regime, and did not exceed 20 per cent of the 
total adult males of the population. Very shortly after this a form 
of provincial government was established in which the legislative and 
executive control of the province was largety vested in a provincial 
board consisting of a governor and treasurer and supervisor. Pro- 
vision was made for the election of a governor and the appointment 
under civil-service rules of a treasurer and supervisor. Subsequently 
it was found that the government was too expensive and the office of 
supervisor was finally abolished, and after some four years the board 
was made to consist of a governor and treasurer, and a third member 
elected as the governor was, thus effecting popular autonomy in the 
provincial governments. And now comes the Assembly. 

It is said by one set of critics, to whom I have already referred, 
that the franchise is the last privilege that ought to be granted in 
the development of a people into a self-governing community, and 
that we have put this into the hands of the Filipinos before they 
have shown themselves to be industrially and in other ways capable 
of exercising the self-restraint and conservatism of action which are 
essential to political stability. I can not agree with this view. The 
best political education is practice in the exercise of political power, 
unless the subject is so ignorant as to be wholly blind to his own 



EEPORT OF SECRETAEY OF WAR ^ ON THE PHILIPPINES. 89 

interests. Hence the exercise of a franchise which is conferred only 
on those who have qualifications of education or property that prove 
intelligence and substance, is likely to teach the electorate useful 
political lessons.* The electorate under the Philippine law are suf- 
ficiently alive to their own interests to make the exercise of political 
power a useful training for them, while the power to be exercised is 
subject to such limitation as not to be dangerous to the community. 
More than this, the granting of the franchise was most useful in pro- 
ducing tranquillity among the people. The policy has been vindi- 
cated by the fact.*- 

The importance of the agency of the Army of the United States 
in suppressing insurrection I would not minimize in the least; but 
all who remember clearly the succession of events from 1901 to 1903 
will admit that the return to peace and the acquiescence of the Fili- 
pino people in American sovereignty were greatly influenced and 
aided by the prospect held out to the Filipinos of participation in 
the government of the Islands and a gradual extension of popular 
self-control. Without this and the confidence of the Filipino people 
in the good purposes of the United States and the patience with 
which they endured their many burdens that fate seemed to increase, 
the progress which has been achieved would have been impossible. 

Let us consider in some detail what progress has been made : 

First. To repeat what I have said, the Islands are in a state of 
tranquillity. On this very day of the opening of the National 
Assembly, there has never been a time in the history of the Islands 
when peace and good order have prevailed more generally. The 
diflBculties presented by the controversies arising with and concern- 
ing the Roman Catholic Church have either been completely settled 
or are in process of satisfactory adjustment on a basis of justice and 
equity. "^ 

Second. Most noteworthy progress has been made in the spread 
of general education. One of the obstacles to the development of 
this people speaking half a dozen or more different native dialects 
was a lack of a common language, which would furnish a medium 
of sympathetic touch with modern thought and civilization. The 
dense ignorance of a very large proportion of the people emphasized 
the necessity for a general educational system. English was the 
language of the sovereign power, English was the business language 
of the Orient, English was the language in which was thought and 
written the history of free institutions and popular government, and 
English was the language to which the common people turned with 
eagerness to learn. A system of education was built up, and to-day 
upward of half a million children are being taught to read, write, 
and recite English. It is not an exaggeration to assert that now 
more native Filipinos speak English than Spanish, although Spanish 



90 REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

was the language of the ruhng race in these Islands for more than 
two hundred and fifty years. English is' not so beautiful as the 
Spanish language, but it is more likely to prove of use to the Fili- 
pinos for the reasons I have given. The strongest basis for our 
confidence in the future of the Filipino people is the eagerness with 
which the opportunities extended for education in English have 
been seized by the poor and ignorant parents of these Islands for 
their children. , It is alike pathetic and encouraging. 

I am not one of those who believe that much of the public money 
should be expended here for university or advanced education. 
Perhaps one institution merely to form a type of higher education may 
be established at Manila or at some other suitable place in the Islands, 
and special schools to develop needed scientific professions may be 
useful, but the great part of the public funds expended for education 
should be used in the spread of primary education and of industrial 
education — that education which shall fit young men to be good farm- 
ers, good mechanics, good skilled laborers, and shall teach them the 
dignity of labor and that it is no disgrace for the son of a good family 
to learn his trade and e^rn his livelihood by it. The higher education 
is well for those who can use it to advantage, but it too often fits a man 
to do things for which there is no demand, and unfits him for work 
which there are too few to do. The enlagrement of opportunity for 
higher education may well await private beneficence or be postponed 
to a period when the calls upon the Island Treasury for other more 
important improvements have ceased. We have laid the foundation 
of a primary and industrial educational system here which, if the 
same spirit continues in the Government, will prove to be the most last- 
ing benefit which has been conferred on these Islands by Americans. 

Third. We have introduced here a health department wliich is grad- 
ually teaching the people the necessity for sanitation. In the years 
to come, when the great discoveries of the world are recited,that which 
will appear to have played as large a part as any in the world's prog- 
ress in the current hundred years will be the discovery of proper sani- 
tary methods for avoiding disease in the Tropics. The introduction 
of such methods, the gradual teaching of the people the simple facts 
affecting hygiene, unpopular and difficult as the process of education 
has been, will prove to be another one of the great benefits given by 
Americans to this people. 

The efforts of the Government have not been confined to preserving 
the health of the human inhabitants of these Islands, but have been 
properly extended to doing what can be done in the matter of the 
health of the domestic animals which is so indispensable to the mate- 
rial progress of the Islands. The destruction by rinderpest, by surra, 
and by other diseases to which cattle and horses are subject, I 
have already dwelt upon. Most earnest attention has been given by 



EEPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 91 

men of the highest scientific attainment to securing some remedy 
which will make such widespread disasters in the future impossible. 
Much time and effort and money have been^ spent and much has been 
accomplished in this matter. The people are being educated in the 
necessity for care of their cattle and for inviting in public^aid at once 
when the dread rinderpest shows its presence. Serums have been 
discovered that have been effective to immimize cattle, and while the 
disease has not disappeared, it is not too much to say that- such an 
epidemic as that which visited the Islands in 1900, 1901, and 1902 is 
impossible. 

Fourth. A judicial system has been established in the Islands which 
has taught the Filipinos the possibility of the independence of|^a judi- 
ciary. This must be of enduring good to the people of the Islands. 
The personnel of the judges is divided between Americans and Fili- 
pinos, both for the purpose of aiding the Americans to learn and 
administer civil law and of enabling the Filipinos to learn and admin- 
ister justice according to a system prevailing in a country where the 
judiciary is absolutely independent of the executive or legislative 
branches of the Government. Charges have been made that individ- 
ual judges and particular courts have not been free from executive 
control and have not been without prejudices arising from the race of 
the particular judge who sat in the court, but on the whole an impar- 
tial review of the six years' history of the administration of justice will 
show that the system has been productive of the greatest good and that 
right has been sustained without fear or favor. It is entirely natural 
that a system which departs from the principles of that in which one 
has been educated should at times attract his severe animadversion, 
and as the system here administered partakes of two systems, it is 
subject to the criticism of those trained in each. 

Another agency in the administration of justice has been the Con- 
stabulary. When I was here something more than two years ago, 
the complaints against that body were numerous, emphatic, and 
bitter. I promised, on behalf of the Philippine government and the 
Washington Administration, that close investigation should be made 
into the complaints and that if there was occasion for reform, that 
reform would be carried out. It gratifies me on my return to the 
Islands now to learn that a change has come, that the complaints 
against the Constabulary have entirely ceased, and that it is now 
conceded to be discharging with efficiency the function which it was 
chiefly created to perform, of sympathetically aiding the provincial 
governors and municipal authorities of the Islands in maintaining 
the peace of each province and each municipality, and that there is a 
thorough spirit of cooperation between the officers and men of the 
Constabulary and the local authorities. 



92 REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR OK THE PHILIPPINES. 

In respect to the administration of justice by justices of the peace, 
reforms have been effected, but I am not sure that there is not still 
great room for improvement. This is one of the things that come 
home close to the people of the country and is a subject that will 
doubtless address itself to the wise action and consideration of the 
National Assembly. 

Fifth. We come to the matter of public improvements. The port 
of Manila has been made into a harbor which is now as secure as any 
in the Orient, and which, with the docking facilities that are now 
being rapidly constructed, will be as convenient and as free from 
charge and burden as any along the Asiatic coast. The improve- 
ments in Iloilo and Cebu harbors, the other two important ports of 
the Islands, are also rapidly progressing. Road building has pro- 
ceeded in the Islands, both at the instance of the Central Government 
and through the agency of the provinces. The difficulties of road 
building and road maintaining in the Philippines are little understood 
by those not familiar with the difficulty of securing proper material 
to resist the enormous wear and tear caused by the torrential down- 
pours of the rainy season. Progress in this direction must necessarily 
be gradual, for the Islands are a poor country, comparatively speak- 
ing, and roads are expensive. 

Early in the history of the Islands we began the construction of a 
road from Pangasinan to the mountains of Benguet in order to bring 
within the reach of the people of the Islands that healthful region 
where the thermometer varies from 40 to 80 degrees, and in which all 
the diseases of the Tropics are much more easily subject to cure than in 
the lowlands. Plad it been supposed that the road thus to be con- 
structed would involve an expense of nearly two millions of dollars, 
the work would not have been begun, but, now that the road has been 
constructed, I would not undo what has been done even if it were 
possible. As time progresses, the whole Province of Benguet will be 
settled ; there will be made the home of many educational institutions, 
of many sanitariums, and there will go, as transportation becomes 
cheaper, the Filipino people to obtain a change of air and acquire a 
renewed strength that is given to tropical peoples by a visit to the 
temperate zone. 

When the Americans came to the Islands there was one railroad 120 
miles long, and that was all. In spite of circumstances, which I have 
already detailed, making capital reluctant to come here, contracts 
have now been entered into, that are in the course of fulfillment, which 
in five years will give to the Islands a railroad mileage of 1,000 miles. 
The construction of these roads will involve the investment of twenty 
to thirty millions of dollars, and that in itself means an added pros- 
perity to the country, additional demands for labor, and the quicken- 
ing of all the nerves of trade. When the work is finished, it means a 



REPORT OF SECRETARY OP WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 93 

great additional profit to agriculture, a very great enlargement of the 
export capacity of the Islands, and a substantial elevation of the 
material condition of the people. 

In the matter of municipal improvements, which directly concern 
the people, that which has taken place in Manila is most prominent. 
The improvement of the streets, the introduction of a satisfactory 
street railway system 35 miles in length, the improvement of the 
general appearance of the city and its hygienic condition, the con- 
struction of new waterworks and a new sewage S3^stem, all strike one 
who knew the city in 1900. The improvements of other municipali- 
ties in the Islands have not kept pace with those in Manila, and of 
course they were not so imperatively needed; but the epidemics of 
cholera and plague and smallpox which have prevailed have con- 
vinced those in authority of the necessity of bettering the water sup- 
ply of all municipalities and for improving this by the sinking of 
artesian wells and other means, so that bad water^ that frightful 
source of the transmission of disease, should be reduced to a mini- 
mum. 

The government now maintains and operates a more complete sys- 
tem of posts, telephones, and telegraphs than ever before in the 
history of the Islands. Seventy-five per cent of the 652 municipali- 
ties now estabhshed in these Islands have post-offices, in 235 of 
which there are now opened for business postal savings banks. The 
telegraph or telephone now connects all of the provincial capitals 
with Manila and more than 90 offices are now open for business. 
Appropriation has been made to provide for a system of rural free 
dehvery. In less than one year of operation the Postal Savings 
Bank has deposits exceeding ^600,000, and the number of Filipino 
depositors now exceeds 1,000, and the proportion of their deposits 
is steadily increasing. 

Sixth. We have inaugurated a civil service law for the selection 
of civil servants upon the merit system. On the whole it has worked 
well. It has grown with our experience and has improved with the 
disclosure of its defects. 

One of the burning questions which constantly presents itself in 
respect to the civil service of a Government like this is, how far it shall 
be American and how far Filipino. In the outset it was essential that 
most of the civil servants of the government should be Americans. 
The government was English speaking, and the practical difficulty of 
having subordinates who did not speak that language prevented large 
employment of Filipinos. Then their lack of knowledge of their 
American governmental and business methods had the same tendency. 
The avowed policy of the government has been to employ Filipinos 
wherever, as between them and Americans, the Filipinos can do 
equally good work. This has given rise to frequent and bitter criti- 
cism, because it has been improperly assumed that every time that 



94 REPOET OF SECEETARY OF WAE ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

there has been a vacancy, it could be filled by a Filipino. There are 
two great advantages in the employment of Filipinos — one is that this 
is the government of the Filipinos and they ought to be employed 
where they can be, and the other is that their employment is a matter 
of economy for the government, because they are able to live more 
cheaply and economically in the Islands than Americans and so can 
afford to receive less salary. There has therefore been a constant 
reduction of American employees and an increase of Filipinos. This 
has not been without its disadvantage because it makes competent 
American employees feel an uncertainty of tenure, and materially 
affects their hope of promotion and their interest in the government 
of which they are a part. This disadvantage I believe can be largely 
obviated. 

There are many American civil servants in this government who 
have rendered most loyal, difficult, and efficient service, in season and 
out of season, through plague and epidemic, in sickness and in health, 
in lull sympathy with the purposes and policy of the government. 
Without them our government would have been a complete failure. 
They will never receive adequate reward. Their interest in their 
work has prevented their return to their native land, where the same 
energy and efficiency would have earned them large return. They are 
most valuable public servants who have done a work that, had they 
done it in the English colonial service or at home, would have been 
certain to secure to them a permanent salary and entire freedom from 
anxiety as to the future. I would be glad to see adopted a system of 
permanent tenure and retirement on pensions for the small and higher 
classes of civil employees. Their continuance in the government 
indefinitely is a public necessity. I sincerely hope the Philippine 
Assembly will exhibit its spirit of justice and public interest to the 
point of concurring in such a measure even though this, at present, 
will be of benefit to more Americans than FiHpinos. 

Seventh. In the progress which has been made, I should mention 
the land system, the provision for homestead settlement, for free 
patents, and for perfecting of imperfect titles by land registration. 
The homestead settlements under the law were very few for several 
years, but I am delighted to learn that during 1907 they reached 4,000 
and the free patents applied for were 10,600. It is probable that the 
machinery for land registration, though necessary, is too expensive, 
and it will be for you to decide whether, in view of the great public 
benefit that good land titles will bring to the country, it may not be 
wise to reduce the cost of registration to the landowner and charge the 
expense to the government. Capital will not be advanced to the 
farmer unless his title is good, and the great benefit of an agricultural 
bank can never be reaHzed until the registration of titles is greatly 
increased. 



EEPORT OF SECRETAKY OP WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 95 

This naturally brings me to the subject of the Agricultural Bank. 
After much effort Congress was induced to pass an act which author- 
izes the Philippine Government to invite the organization of such a 
bank with private capital by guaranteeing an annual income of a cer- 
tain percentage on the capital invested for thirty years. Negotia- 
tions have been opened and are pending with some American capital- 
ists in the hope of securing the establishment of such a bank. 

The condition of agriculture in the Islands while generally much 
improved in the last three years is still unsatisfactory in many parts 
of the Islands, due not only to the continued scarcity of cattle but 
also to the destructive effect of the typhoon of 1905 upon the hemp 
culture. This has properly led to the suspension of the land tax for 
another year and the meeting of half the deficit in provincial and 
municipal treasuries thus produced, out of the central treasury. 

The production of rice has, however, materially increased. It is 
also a source of satisfaction to note that the exports from the Islands, 
which are wholly agricultural, are larger in value by half a million 
gold dollars than ever in the history of the Islands. One of the chief 
duties of this Assembly is to devote its attention and practical 
knowledge to measures for the relief of agriculture. 

Eighth. The financial condition of the Philippine government 
is quite satisfactory, and so, too, is the state of the money and cur- 
rency of the Islands. There is a bonded indebtedness for the pur- 
chase of the friar lands amounting to $7,000,000, for the waterworks 
and sewage of Manila of $3,000,000, and for public works amounting 
to $3,500,000. Sinking fimds have been established for all of these. 
The price paid for the friar lands was a round one and may result, 
after the lands are disposed of, in some net pecuniary loss to the Govern- 
ment, but the pohtical benefit of the purchase was a full justification. 
The lands will be disposed of to the tenants as rapidly as the public 
interest will permit. The only other permanent obligation of the 
government is the contingent liabihty on the guaranty of interest for 
thirty years on the bonds issued to construct 300 miles of railroad in 
the Visayas. We may reasonably hope that this obhgation will 
soon reduce itself to nothing when the roads come into successful 
operation. The Governor-General reports to me that the budget 
for 1908 mil show an income and surplus from last year, without any 
land tax, from which it will be possible to pay all the interest on the 
bonds and guaranties, all the insular expenses, the proper part of the 
expenses of Manila, $2,000,000 in permanent improvements, and still 
have on hand for contingencies $1,000,000. I am further advised 
that the condition of most of the provinces is excellent in respect to 
income and surplus. 

It has been necessary to reduce the silver in the Philippine peso to 
keep its intrinsic value within the value of 50 cents, gold, at which 



96 KEPORT OF SECRETABY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

it is the duty of the government to maintain it, and this change is 
being rapidly carried through without much difficulty. The benefit 
to the people, and especially the poorer and working classes, in the 
estabhshment of the gold standard is very great. It ehminates a 
gambling feature from the business of the Islands that always worked 
for the detriment of the Philippine people. We are just carrying 
through a settlement with the Spanish-FiHpino Bank which I hope 
will provide a means of safely adding to the currency of the country 
and increasing its elasticity. 

In recounting these various evidences of progress in the last 
six years I am not unmindful that the business of the Islands is 
still far from prosperous. Indeed, it is noteworthy that so much 
progress has been made in the face of continued business depres- 
sion due to the various causes I have elsewhere enumerated; but 
it is a long lane that has no turning and I look forward to the next 
decade in the history of the Islands as one which will be as pros- 
perous as this one has been the reverse. Business is reviving, 
the investment of foreign capital is gradually increasing and only 
one thing is needed to insure great material improvement, and that 
is the continuance of conservatism in this Government. I feel 
confident that the inauguration of this Assembly, instead of ending 
this conservatism as the prophets of evil would have it, will 
strengthen it. 

Before discussing the Assembly, I wish to give attention to one 
report that has been spread to the four corners of the globe, and 
which, if credited, might have a pernicious effect in these Islands. 
I. refer to the statement that the American Government is about 
to sell the Islands to some Asiatic or European power. Those who 
credit such a report little understand the motives which actuated 
the American people in accepting the burden of this Government. 
The majority of the American people are still in favor of carrying 
out our Philippine policy as a great altruistic work. They have 
no selfish object to secure. There might be a grim and temporary 
satisfaction to those of us who have been subjected -to severe criti- 
cism for our alleged lack of liberality toward the Filipino people 
and of sympathy with their aspirations, in witnessing the rigid 
governmental control which would be exercised over the people of 
the Islands under the colonial policy of any one of the powers to 
whom it is suggested that we are about to sell them ; but that would 
not excuse or justify the gross violation, by such a sale, of the implied 
obligation which we have entered into with the Filipino people. 
That obligation presents only two alternatives for us — one is a 
permanent maintenance of a popular government of law and order 
under American control, and the other, a parting with such con- 
trol to the people of the Islands themselves after they have become 



EEPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 97 

fitted to maintain a government in which the right of all the inhabit- 
ants to life, liberty, and property shall be secure. I do not hesi- 
tate to pronounce the report that the Government contemplates 
the transfer of these Islands to any foreign power as utterly with- 
out foundation. It has never entered the mind of a single person 
in the Government responsible for the Administration. Such a 
sale must be the subject of a treaty, and the treaty power in the 
Government of the United States is exercised by the President 
and the Senate, and only upon the initiative of the President. Hence 
an Executive declaration upon this subject is more authoritative 
than an Executive opinion as to probable Congressional action. 

Coming now to the real occasion of this celebration, the installa- 
tion of the National Assembly, I wish, for purposes of clearness, to 
read the section of the organic act under which this Assembly has 
been elected: 

That two years after the completion and publication of the census, in case 
such condition of general and complete peace with recognition of the authority of the 
United States shall have continued in the territory of said Islands not inhabited by 
Moros or other non-Ohristian tribes and such facts shall have been certified to the 
President by the Philippine Commission, the President upon being satisfied thereof 
shall direct said Commission to call, and the Commission shall call, a general elec- 
tion for the choice of delegates to a popular assembly of the people of said Territory 
in the Philippine Islands, which shall be known as the Philippine Assembly. After 
said Assembly shall have convened and organized, all the legislative power hereto- 
fore conferred on the Philippine Commission in all that part of said Islands not inhab- 
ited by Moros or other non-Christian tribes shall be vested in a legislature consisting 
of two houses — the Philippine Commission and the Philippine Assembly. Said 
Assembly shall consist of not less than filty nor more than one hundred members, 
to be apportioned by said Commission among the provinces as nearly as practicable 
according to population: Provided, That no province shall have less than one member: 
And provided further, That provinces entitled by population to more than one member 
may be divided into such convenient districts as the said Commission may deem best. " 

Public notice of such division shall be given at least ninety days prior to such elec* 
tion, and the elections shall be hald under rules and regulations to be prescribed by 
law. The qualification of electors in such election shall be the same as is now provided 
by law in case of electors in municipal elections. The members of Assembly shall hold 
office for two years from the first day of January next following their election, and their 
successors shall be chosen by the people every second year thereafter. No person shall 
be eligible to such election who is not a qualified elector of the election district in which 
he may be chosen, owing allegiance to the United States, and twenty-five years of age. 

The Legislature shall hold annual sessions, commencing on the first Monday of Feb- 
ruary in each year and continuing not exceeding ninety days thereafter (Sundays and 
holidays not included) : Provided, That the first meeting of the Legislature shall be held 
upon the call of the Governor within ninety days after the first election: And provided 
further, That if at the termination of any session the appropriations necessary for the 
support of the government shall not have been made, an amount equal to the sums 
appropriated in the last appropriation bills for such purposes shall be deemed to be 
appropriated; and until the Legislature shall act in such behalf the Treasurer may, 
with, the advice of the Governor, make the payments necessary for the purposes 
aforesaid. 

33483—08 7 



98 REPORT OF SECRETAEY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

The Legislature may be called in special session at any time by the Civil Governor 
for general legislation, or for action on such specific subjects as he may designate. No 
special session shall continue longer than thirty days, exclusive of Sundays. 

The Assembly shall be the judg3 of the elections, returns, and qualifications of its 
members. A majority shall constitute a quorum to do business, but a smaller number 
may adjourn from day to day and may be authorized to compel the attendance of 
absent members. It shall choose its Speaker and other officers, and the salaries of its 
members and officers shall be fixed by law. It may determine the rule of its proceed- 
ings,, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and with the concurrence of two- 
thirds expel a member. It shall keep a journal of its proceedings, which shall be pub- 
lished, and the yeas and nays of the members on any question shall, on the demand of 
one-fifth of those present, be entered on the journal. 

I can well remember when that section was drafted in the private 
ofl&ce of Mr. Root in his house in Washington. Only he and I were 
present. I urged the wisdom of the concession and he yielded to my 
arguments and the section as then drafted differed but little from the 
form it has to-day. It was embodied in a bill presented to the House 
and passed by the House, was considered by the Senate, was stricken 
out in the vSenate, and was only restored after a conference, the Sena- 
tors in the conference consenting to its insertion with great reluctance. 
I had urged its adoption upon both committees, and, as the then 
Governor of the Islands, had to assume a responsibility as guarantor 
in respect to it which I have never sought to disavow. I believe that 
it is a step and a logical step in the carrying out of the policy an- 
nounced by President McKinley and that it is not too radical in the 
interest of the people of the Philippine Islands. Its effect is to give 
to a representative body of the Filipinos a right to initiate legislation, 
to modify, amend, shape, or defeat legislation proposed by the Com- 
mission. The power to obstruct by withholding appropriations is 
taken away from the Assembly, because if there is not an agreement 
as to appropriations between the Commission and the Assembly, then 
the appropriations of the previous year will be continued; but the 
power with this exception, absolutely to veto all legislation and 
initiate and shape proposed laws is a most substantial one. The con- 
currence of the Assembly in useful legislation can not but command 
popular support for its enforcement; the discussion in the Assembly 
and its attitude must be informing to the executive and to the other 
branch of the legislature, the Commission, of what are the desires of 
people. The discharge of the functions of the Assembly must give to 
the chosen representatives of the Philippine electorate a most valuable 
education in the responsibilities and difficulties of practical govern- 
ment. It will put them where the}^ must investigate not only the 
theoretical wisdom of proposed measures, but also the question 
whether they can be practically enforced and whether, where expense 
is involved, they are of sufficient value to justify the imposition of a 
financial burden upon the people to carry them out. It will bring the 
members of the Assembly as representatives of the people into close 



EEPORT OF SECRETAEY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 99 

relations with the Executive, who will be most anxious to preserve a 
harmony essential to efficient government and progressive, useful 
measures of reform. 

Critics who do not sympathize with our Philippine policy, together 
with those who were reluctant to grant this measure of a legislative 
assembly to the Philippine people at this time, have not been slow 
to comment on the result of the election as an indication that we 
are going too fast. I differ entirely from the view of these critics 
as to the result of this election and the inferences to be drawn from it. 

The small total vote as compared with the probable number of 
the total electorate shows that a considerable majority of those enti- 
tled to vote did not exercise the privilege. This indicates either an 
indifference or a timidity that we would not find in a people more 
used to the wielding of political power; but it affords no reason for 
supposing that as the Assembly proves its usefulness and important 
power, the ratio of votes to the total electorate will not rapidly 
increase. 

The election was held without disturbance. In many districts 
there were bitter controversies, but the complaints of fraud, violence, 
or bribery are insignificant. Although the Government was sup- 
posed to favor one party, and was subject to much criticism in the 
campaign, no one has been heard to say that the power of the Execu- 
tive was exerted in any way improperly to influence the election. 
This furnishes a good object lesson. 

A popular majority of those who exercise the franchise have voted 
for representatives announcing a desire for the immediate separation 
of the Islands from the United States. This majority is a small one 
when the returns are carefully considered and is much less than the 
ratio between the party representatives in the Assembly would lead 
one to suppose. However, assuming a decided majority tor imme- 
diate independence, the result is one which I thought possible even 
while I was urging the creation of the Assembly. It is not a disap- 
pointment. If it indicated that a majority of the representatives 
elected by the people were a bod}^ of irreconcilables determined to 
do nothing but obstruct the present government, it would indeed 
be discouraging; but I am confident from what I know and hear of 
the gentlemen who have been elected that while many of them 
differ with me as to the time in which the people of the Islands 
will become fit for complete self-government, most of them have an 
earnest desire that this government shall be carried on in the inter- 
ests of the people of the Philippines and for their benefit, and shall 
be made for that purpose as effective as possible. They are thus 
generally conservative. Those whose sole aim is to hold up the 
government to execration, to win away the sympathy of the people 
in order to promote disturbance and violence, have no proper place 



100 REPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

in this Assembly. Had the Filipino people sent such a majority, 
then I should have to admit that the granting of the Assembly was 
a mistake and that Congress must abohsh it. 

It has been reported in the Islands that I was coming here for the 
purpose of expressing, in bitter and threatening words, my disap- 
pointment at the result of the election. Nothing could be further 
from my purpose, nothing could be less truly descriptive of my con- 
dition of mind. I am here, filled mth a spirit of friendship and 
encouragement for these members, who now enter upon a new field 
in which they have much to learn, but where everything can be 
learned and this duty most efiiciently discharged if they are led by 
an earnest desire to assist and guide the government in aiding the 
people. I have no right to appeal to the members of this Assembly 
to conduct themselves in the discharge of their high duties ui a 
manner to vuidicate me in the responsibility I assumed in urgiag 
Congress to estabhsh this Assembly, because they should find a 
stronger reason for so douig in their sworn duty; but it is not iaap- 
propriate for me to touch on this personal feature of the situation, 
because my attitude has been misconstrued and my sympathetic 
interest in, and hope for, the success and usefulness of this National 
Assembly have not been properly stated. 

I venture to point out a number of things that you will learn in the 
course of your legislative experience. One is that the real object of 
a legislature is to formulate specific laws to accomplish specific pur- 
poses and reforms and to suppress specific evils ; that he makes a use- 
ful speech who studies the question which he discusses and acquires 
and imparts practical information by which the remedies offered can be 
seen to be applicable to the evil complained of; that the office of a 
legislator for a great country like this is one that can be discharged 
conscientiously only by the use of great labor, careful, painstaking 
investigation and hard work ui the preparation of proposed measures. 
One of the most necessary traits in a successful legislator or executive 
is patience. Where the sudden change in that which is regarded as 
a wrong system may paralyze a necessary arm of the government, 
wa3^s and means must be devised to bring about the change gradually. 
There will be a temptation to take up measures which will invite the 
support of popular prejudice rather than measures which will really 
accomplish good for the body politic. vSuch a temptation exists in 
older legislative bodies than this, and we can not hope that it will be 
absent from here; but, in the end, the man who exerts the most 
influence in this body and among the people will be the man who 
devotes most conscientiously his time to acquiring the information 
upon which legislation should be based and in explaining it to his 
colleagues and his people. The man who is seeking to put his adver- 
sary or the government in an embarrassing situation may win tem- 



EEPOKT OF SECRETABY OP WAB ON THE PHILIPPINES. 101 

porary triumph; but the man who himself feels responsibility of 
government, and who, while not concealing or failing to state the 
evils which he considers to exist in the government, is using every 
effort to reform those evils, will ultimately be regarded as the bene- 
factor of his country. 

I have not the time and doubtless not the information which would 
justify me in pointing out^to_the Assembly the various subjects- 
matter to which they may profitably devote their attention with a view 
to the formulation of useful legislation. They will properly feel called 
upon to devote their attention to public economy in the matter of 
the numerous governmental bureaus which have been made the sub- 
ject of criticism. It is quite possible that they may find in their 
investigations into these matters reasons for cutting off officers and 
bureaus, but I sincerely hope that no such effort will be made until 
a full investigation is had into the utility of the functions which the 
bureau performs and the possibihty of dispensing with them. I can 
remember that while I was Governor there was much outcry against 
the extravagance of maintaining certain bureaus which in subseqaent 
crises in the pubHc welfare proved their great usefulness beyond 
cavil. Of course we shall encounter in this investigation and discus- 
sion a radical difference between legislators and others as to the func- 
tion which a government in these Islands ought to perform. It is 
entirely easy to run an economical government if all that you do is 
to maintain order and if no steps are taken to promote health, to 
promote education, and to promote the general welfare of the inhab- 
itants. It is of course the object of the person charged with the 
duty of governing a country to reach the golden mean — that is, to 
make governmental provisions for the weKare of the people without 
imposing too great a tax burden for the purpose. The taxes in this 
country are imposed partly by the legislature and partly by Con- 
gress. The former will constantly have your attention. In so far 
as the welfare of the country is affected by the latter, to wit, the 
customs duties, and can be improved by a change of them, it would 
be wise for the Legislature to devote much time and thought to 
recommendations to Congress as to how they should be changed, for 
I doubt not that Congress will be wilHng and anxious to take such 
steps as may commend themselves to the people of the Islands in 
the matter of adjustment of duties, having regard to the raising of 
sufficient revenue on the one hand and to as Httle interference with 
useful freedom of trade as possible on the other. 

As you shall conduct your proceedings and shape your legislation 
on patriotic, inteUigent, conservative, and useful fines, you will show 
more emphatically than in any other way your right and capacity to 
take part in the government and the wisdom of granting to your 
Assembly and to the people that elected you, more power. There 



102 BEPORT OF SECRETARY OF WAR ON THE PHILIPPINES. 

are still many possible intervals or steps between the power you 
now exercise and complete autonomy. Will this Assembly and its 
successors manifest such an interest in the welfare of the people and 
such clear-headed comprehension of their sworn duty as to call for a 
greater extension of poHtical power to this body and to the people 
whose representative it is ? Or shall it, by neglect, obstruction, and 
absence of useful service, make it necessary to take away its existing 
powers on the ground that they have been prematurely granted? 
Upon you falls this heavy responsibiUty. I am assxured that you will 
meet it with earnestness, courage, and credit. 

In closing, I can only renew my congratulations upon the auspi- 
cious beginning of your legislative life in a fair election, and to 
express to you my heartfelt sympathy in the work which you are 
about to imdertake, and my confidence that you will justify in what 
you do, and do not do, the recommendations of those who are respon- 
sible for that section in the organic act that has given Ufe to this 
Assembly. 





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